


Specimen Serial No. K119

by mastercookk119



Category: Original Work
Genre: Civil War, F/M, Fantasy, Identity Issues, Military, Modern Era, School, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2020-03-26 06:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 57,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19000303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mastercookk119/pseuds/mastercookk119
Summary: The governments of the world have united under the Imperial Order. They exist to wipe out terror and anyone that resists them, but who knows what crafty measures they take in doing so.Tokyo has been made one of the major districts of the Order since its inception.Kei and his friend Ri are 10-years-old kids at the Imperial Military School in the Tokyo District of the Imperial Order. The students in that school face terrifying lives as they are taught under scrutinizing discipline in their development as soldiers for the Nation. None of them are allowed to go outside the school. The students are taught that they owe absolute fealty to the Imperial Order. Kei and Ri, however, believe that there's something more to their lives than just becoming assets for the Government and the Imperial Order. This is the story of them as they discover the truth of their identities and the Imperial Order.





	1. Prologue

1 July 2060

It may seem weird of me to say that I am not disappointed at all, but the bruises that these teachers have been giving are getting more as the years pass. At least I have Ri to bear them with.  
  
Since it is the new semester and the risk of losing these entries increase from year to year I may as well introduce myself once again. I am Keiichi Ichikyu, student at the primary Imperial Military School in the Tokyo District. I am going to be 10 this year. The Ri I just mentioned is my good friend and dormmate, and has been the only friend I had since I first started remembering things. We grew up in this school and all of the horrors it had to give. We were forced to memorise every single word in the Imperial Dictionary 2057 Edition and every single character in the Hanyu Cidian (Han Mandarin Characters) 2057 Edition. All of that was done in my first year – when I was seven. I know I have lost the feel of it, but I remember the teachers tying us up on the dungeon walls and hitting us with wooden rods whenever we failed to recite the meaning of each word for that week’s quota – or should I say, “homework”. Sadly, only half of that year’s batch survived, the rest died of severe blood loss, stroke, shock, epilepsy, you name it. Just take a look at the scars and marks on my arm, they are the reason I possess a horrible handwriting, which is one of the many reasons the teachers at school despise me for.  
  
From what they say, the reason we undergo all these deathly tasks is to prepare us to be soldiers against the terrors that the rebels and the Chaos Territory would soon bring about and cause calamity upon humanity. Now that I think about, it’s a really good joke.  
  
To whoever is reading this, you may find that I am writing all this with a dull expression, as if I was making all this up. These experiences are, however, no less the truth. The very reason I fret on it no more is because these teachers are not done with the physical abuse that they have been giving us till this very day. They place high-standards on us students, they make us sit for intense and vigorous tests, I hear that some of those who failed the firearms test were taken to an electrocution room. Yet, if this is all normal and expected of a human boy like me, then I guess I have nothing to complain about. Although, I am kind of surprised that I have somehow adapted my pain tolerance to match that which has been given to me day and night by the teachers. The strict punishments, beatings, caning, and torture that they have been giving are not the only painful things they have been giving. These instructors play the favouritism game among us students, cultivating their own good “dogs” to constantly hammer that nail of fealty on our minds. Strangely, as a 10-year-old, I am shocked that I am even writing this fearlessly.  
  
I don’t know why, but the teachers, particularly Madam Genie, have been treating me like the worst student in the academy. Whenever she gets angry at either my class or me, I would be the first to get hit. I don’t know if its because of that time when I refused to listen to her when she instructed us to press the button that electrocutes the prisoners, or that time when I tried to retaliate when she was about to lash at me with the principal’s whip. I have tried filing reports of her, which have all backfired. One of the students, Jad, one day out of a sudden started crying, claiming that I had beaten him up. He even unmasked his sleeves to show his bruises. The greatest catastrophe was that with everything shown Jad was able to buy off almost all the other students. Needless to say, my voice was nothing compared to about 50 of them, and just when I thought I would wait for a teacher to come and settle the situation, Madam Genie came right to the scene and the first thing she did was knock me out and pull me by my collar to the principal’s room. She claimed that I was trying to cause chaos, first by making “false accusations” about her, and then bringing brutality upon the students. Naturally, I was brought to the principal’s room, had my hands tied, and I was caned.  
  
Believe me, I had a lot to say, but those higher ups believed that a ten-year-old like me was not qualified to speak for myself. This was the highlight of the conversation:  
  
“I did not hit Jad, I’ve never touched any metal rod in the school before!”  
  
“Shut up, you brat! You’re just trying to hurt us all!” blabbered Madam Genie.  
  
At that point, I was filled with righteous anger. I couldn’t help but curse.  
  
“Why do you hate me so much, Madam Genie? Why don’t you ever treat me like the others? If you see me as an annoying cockroach, like you’ve been doing for the past two years, why not hand me to an orphanage or throw me into the dump?”  
  
I still couldn’t believe I said that, as a ten-year-old kid. It may have been true that the teachers played favouritism against me because of the oddly different way in which I thought and behaved. Anyway, I was extremely frustrated and furious at that point, so that might have been just simply the reason.  
  
“That’s enough! You good-for-nothing!” the principal finally intervened, with his proclamation of siding with Madam Genie. “Take him to the Disciplinary Room and give him 50 lashes!”  
  
Perhaps indeed, those grown-ups are heartless. They and the government exist to carry out their own will, and we, the children are their assets.  
  
After all that’s been said, and done, I was taken back to my dorm, where my helpless painful body was thrown in right in front of Ri’s eyes. There wasn’t, however, much for me to envy him about. I have seen Ri getting worse treatment, so bad that he sneaked out of piloting class once, and couldn’t speak to anyone for a month, not even to me. I would have asked, but I thought my silence was for the good of both of us. After all, it wasn’t like we didn’t know each other’s daily sufferings. Like me, Ri seems to think differently from the other boys and girls. I daresay, Ri and I thought very maturely. It is for this reason that the both of us are able to relate to each other and become each other’s only good friend.  
  
That said, though I keep an expressionless face most of the time, through rain or shine, but it feels like there’s some sort of fear deep inside me that, if turned into reality, would make me lose sanity once and for all. I think about it every night, after going through the entire day of hopelessness. It would be better for me if those so-called terrorists were to suddenly drop a bomb in this school and save Ri and I from all this misery.  
  
What is this life supposed to mean? Am I meant to be exploited and turned into military labour for the rest of my life? If it was, maybe those children who died in the first of year of school have had it better than the rest of us.  
  
Well, it seems that Ri has gone to bed and the night is making me sleepy, I may as well end my entry here.


	2. Awakening - The Stranger Who Knows Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life in the Military School is tough, the teachers are tyrannical and have high expectations of their students. The weak don't survive, and the strong must strive to live through their daily sufferings.  
> This life that Kei had changes one day, when he decides to break into the canteen's kitchen to steal food.

In Kei's eyes

 

Until my entry on 1 July 2060, things were just ordinary and dull.

                “Keiichi Ichikyu,” Madam Genie called, she was handing out test papers. I promptly got up from my seat and walked to the front where that abominable monstrosity was sitting. Did I score well? Or did I fail? Why the hell would I have cared? Madam Genie and the rest of the teachers would probably continue in their efforts in dragging us around like slaves.

                I saw the red-inked score on the paper with my name on it, it was written in a circle: “99/100”. I turned to face Madam Genie, with a “so what?” expression. I predicted her intentions the very moment she turned to the fourth page of the test paper, where we were forced to memorise up to 20 significant figures of the numerical values of certain constants. Then she pointed with her index finger to a question that contained the _pi_ symbol in it. Following that symbol was my written answer, beginning with a “3.141” and 17 other digits. I saw that one of them was circled in red.

                “You misplaced this ‘5’ with a ‘2’,” she said to me. “Do you understand what you must face?”

                Most other children would have sucked up their mucus and responded with tears flowing down their arms.

                “Yes, I do,” I simply answered.

                Madam Genie snatched a red sheet of paper containing a form, scribbled on it with her furious handwriting, then with her other hand, she tossed my test paper onto the floor. I picked it up and walked back to my seat. Everyone, from the moment I was called to the front to 10 seconds after I returned, were all eyeballing me, except for Ri maybe, he was probably asleep.

                Fortunately, as some of you may have thought, the form was not a request to have me receive public caning. It was worse than that. I was restricted from having my lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner for that entire day. As I did, most students by the time they reached my age, had given up on begging other students for food as not only was it forbidden, but it opened doors for the teacher’s favourite dogs to exploit your embarrassment. Yes, it shocks me to know that these kids would continue to play the teacher’s favourite despite everything they do to them.

                Firearms and combat class was making me extremely tired, considering I skipped lunch. There were times during breaks at the quiet corner of the simulation room where Ri and I always sat, he would nudge me and pull out a slice of bread from his pocket. I snatched them from him as soon as he showed them to me. This was our normal practice of “food sharing” and there was no chance to say any thanks as it would erupt curiosity among other students and the teacher.

                When class ended, we exited the simulation room.

                “Look, you don’t have to do this for me anymore,” I told Ri, half guilt-ridden.

                “You mean, you’re gonna do **that**?”

                “I’ve tried it once before, I didn’t get caught, not even close.”

                “Wait, if you do, they might lock you up in a cell and starve you to death.”

                I dragged Ri to a silent corner in the corridor, where no one could see. Then I threw my fist into the wall, 20 centimetres to the left of Ri’s face.

                “Are you kidding me? That’s no different from tying us up and whipping us that day,”

                The teacher’s words, actions, and their well-being meant no more to me. I was tired of this world. Not only was I hated by the people who forced me to live in it, they even made themselves the very people I would one day dream to destroy.

                “What is stealing a loaf of bread compared to all of the killing, tormenting, abusing and brainwashing they have done?”

                Ri was about to get in my way with a hug, but he restrained. I knew what he wanted to tell me, and he had reasons to not tell them to me. Ri was not as rebellious as I was, he was firm in the decisions and moves he made, but he willingly accepted whatever punishment was given to him. He is the only person I know who can give a meaning of what nice means.

                “I will get going and return undetected, you’ve got my word,” I replied.

                Ri and I parted ways; for Ri it was our dorm, for me it was the canteen’s back door.

 

* * *

In Ri’s eyes

 

                As I laid in bed, I thought about the many things that happened to them since Year One. I thought about one of the first things he was ever able to remember in school.

                I stood at a desk in a classroom. To the left of me, to the right of me, to the front of me, to the back of him, were all young boys and girls. Everyone was in green, green collared shirts and green slacks that stretched from the hips to right above the knee. There was board in front of the classroom, an electronic board where you can tap on and write on it using a stylus. We were told that this board was revolutionary as it finally dissolved the need for the manufacture of marker ink.

The front door at the most right opened. A woman with long black hair appeared. She was in Imperial Military uniform.

                “Good morning, ma’am,” the entire class chanted. Raising her index finger, she pushed her glasses back.

                “Madam Genie,” she said sternly. For some reason, I might have been the only one who sensed that something terrible was going to happen, yet the other kids retained their innocent faces.

                The way she picked up a book that she had just dropped on the table moments ago when she came in was sinister. There was an infectious aura of terror, it was then that the other children had their innocent smiley faces torn away for the first and last time.

                To think that the first thing this teacher would say to her class was about homework, and it was not just any kind of homework.

                “Do you see this book?” she pointed to the book she was holding with the other index finger. On it was printed the words “Imperial Dictionary, 2057 edition”. She opened it and quickly flipped through the pages to see, as she continued, “This is a dictionary. It contains the meanings and definitions of every word in the English language.

                “For today, students,” said Madam Genie, her voice even more hideous. “You are going to memorise the meanings of the words listed from page one to twenty.”

                The other students looked at each other but dared not proceed with any murmuring as they dared not speak in front of a teacher who seemed to be capable of roaring at any moment. I felt an urge to speak up, yet my mouth refused me.

                “It’s too hard ma’am!” a boy who sat at his left, spoke up. “We couldn’t possibly…”

                “I didn’t give you permission to speak, you little brat!” the unimpressed teacher cut in before I could admire the boy’s courage to speak. “I am not going to be giving anymore warnings from now on, but the teacher’s word is absolute. If any of you speak up like this boy did, you will face disciplinary charges.”

                The rest of the class wondered what she would do if anyone were to question her word again like the boy did.

                “Have I made myself clear?” she questioned.

                “Yes, ma’am!”

                Madam Genie picked up a plastic-rubber rod, turned on a switch at the front-most board, then she started scribbling words on it, as if she was writing on a touchscreen.

                “Every principle laid down by the Imperial Order is good. Any little sign of resistance is evil. You are raised here so that you become noble and honourable soldiers for the nation,” she explained as she wrote.

                One of the boys slowly raised his hand, it was the same boy who spoke up earlier. The boy was curious and he wanted his hand to be noticed by the teacher, but she did not turn around, so the boy timidly asked, “Ma’am, do we get to see our parents?”

                I was half anxious, yet half curious. In the Imperial pre-school, the boys and girls were taught that they had parents, but that was all. We were not told of the importance of their parents and whenever someone asked if they would get to see them, the teachers only said that their parents were too busy. However, I doubt Madam Genie would attempt to answer such an interesting question.

                “Come up here!” the teacher roared.

                The boy slowly got up from his desk and walked to the front, he could not believe that he made the teacher angry. As soon as he neared the woman, she took out a metal rod from her belt, then she ferociously swung it at the boy. The boy’s neck was bruised, swollen, but at least not broken, but the boy fell to his knees and tears began to drizzle their way onto his shoes and the floor.

                “Didn’t you hear what I said earlier? You must ask for permission to speak!” Madam Genie demonstrated her authority with great composure. “Stop crying! Crying is a sign of resistance!”

                I was not sure if the boy could withstand his tears, if he could not the teacher would have had to hit him again. Fortunately, the boy was able to suck back his agony.

                “Return to your seat,” and the boy did.

                The class continued with a few hours of silence until finally a bell rang, signalling break time. Students from their respective classes began marching out onto the corridor. There was no sound to be heard save their footsteps, at least until they reached the canteen.

                There were what looked like vending machines lined up at very front, with each of them possessing a queue of students. One by one, as each of them got their own meal, sat at the tables. I saw that the students clumped in groups. After some time, I realized I was eating alone. As I continued to chew the bread I bought, a pat came on my back. Jumping in shock, I thought it was Madam Genie trying to punish me.

                “Hey! What’re you so frightened about?” it was a boy, he had short black hair, very unlike my brown hair that was tied up at my back like a girl’s ponytail. After seeing a bruise on the left side of his neck, I realised that it was my classmate, the very boy who complained about the assignment that Madam Genie gave, and also the same boy who got beaten by Madam Genie’s metal rod.

                “Oh, it’s you,” I responded. “Are you alright? Your neck must’ve really hurt from just now.”

                “It still hurts a little, but it’s much better now,” the boy replied, his smile piercing through my anxiety. “But boy, that was really painful, I couldn’t help but let slip my tears.”

                The bruised boy sat down next to me and opened his own meal box.

                “So, ponytailed boy, what’s your name?”

                “Ri,” embarrassed, I answered lowly.

                “No second name?”

                “No, just Ri.”

                “That’s weird,” the boy replied. Then he pointed at himself with his index finger. “I’m Keiichi Ichikyu, since you’re my friend, you can just call me Kei.”

                I could feel the heat radiating from my own cheeks, my faced had turned red, this boy whom I just met just decided to call me his friend.

                It was like this for the next ten minutes, Kei and I sat in silence as we chewed at our bread. I was not sure if this boy, Kei, was just trying to play the popular kid, and I thought I was disappointing him, so I decided to be apologetic.

                “Erm, Kei, the boys at that table over there have more interesting stuff to talk about, don’t you wanna be with them instead?”

                Kei turned to look at me with the word “disgust” on his face.

                “Are you kidding me? Those boys? I don’t know. I heard some of them talking about how they should obey everything the teacher says,” said Kei. “They said by doing so they could make the teachers happy.”

                Unbeknownst to us, at that time, there were a few boys and girls approaching the both of us.

                “Hey, what’re you two talking about?” said one of the girls, with childlike innocence, much to Kei’s guilt-ridden shock. “I think Madam Genie just wants you to be a little less talkative, you know.”

                “Would you say the same if you were the one getting beaten?” Kei rebutted, trying to shut her up.

                “Look! You made Jin cry!” one of the boys scolded, pointing to the girl Kei shouted arrogantly at. The other kids chanted in synced “ooo”s of anger, arousing Kei to stand up.

                “I made her cry? I was just voicing my own opinion!” Kei replied.

                “Bully, bully! He’s a bully!” one of the boys shouted. “Come on, Jin, Carl, Xi, let’s leave them alone,” and the entire group of them walked off, laughing.

                “Oh yeah? Go away and don’t come back!” shouted Kei, then he sat back down and looked at me. “I don’t know if it’s just me, but it feels like we’re the only ones that don’t fit in with these kids, are we missing out on something?”

                I found Kei’s question very appetizing for some reason, but I wanted to further understand what he was talking about. “What do you mean?” I asked.

                “Maybe we aren’t, but I still don’t quite understand how these kids would deny the bad side of Madam Genie and keep thinking that she’s a good teacher.”

                “That is indeed strange…” I muttered in approval.

                “I know right?” Kei could not contain his delight when he finally had someone who agreed with him. “Oh crap, it’s almost time for class again, let’s eat faster, shall we?”

                The events of that day were not the last horrors we would be seeing in our life.

 

* * *

 In Ri’s eyes

 

                 I was awoken by a siren being sounded from right outside my dorm. I got up, opened the door, and looked outside. A man at the intercom announced.

                “Attention all students! There has been a security breach at Section C. All students are to return to their dorms immediately and in orderly fashion, no one is to move outside except for teachers. The perpetrators’ location is unknown and moving away from your dorms will put you at a security risk. I repeat, all students are to return to your dorms immediately.”

                _Section C? Isn’t that where the canteen is?_

_Oh no! Kei! Come back!_

 

* * *

 In Kei's eyes

 

                The backdoor of the canteen led directly to where all the vending machines were, but it was a quiet blind spot with only a security electronic pin panel protecting it. Luckily, I knew what the pin was.

                I did not steal this information, I actually **discovered** it.

                The need for food was immensely serious as a lot of the punishments that we got involved food rationing. Hence, I had been constantly observing the door. Guards were not able to enter except when there was no one in the area. Strangely, there was not a security camera in that corner. On the first time I encountered this door, I entered a random combination of digits. It was then that I discovered that the pin can only have four digits, so I had an idea. Everyday whenever I had breaks, I would sneak into that corner and try out different combinations of digits. Yes, I was extremely ambitious, yet I knew it was possible. In pre-school Math class, we were taught about permutations. If the pin can only contain four digits, with each of them chosen from any of the ten whole numbers, there could be five thousand and forty possible combinations. I had decided to discover this unknown, so I devised a plan. There are about fifty-two weeks in a year, with seven days in one week. If I try out at least four combinations a day, I would be able to discover the code within four years. Although Ri warned me of the possibility that the school may have been changing the pin code once in a while, he even helped me with my crime by listing down the used codes. Thankfully, there was no limit to how many times you can fail, there was no siren or alarm. This was my fourth year at the school, and we eventually found it.

                I dialed on the keypad the numbers “9378”, then I silently pushed the door and waltzed my way in. In a tyrannical school where the teachers were monsters, and the authorities were nothing but regulation enforcers, successfully committing a crime was music to my ears and dopamine for my nerves. I opened a drawer at a counter, in which I knew contained a few different keys. Each of these keys could unlock the food compartment of one of the vending machines. These keys were not able to unlock the change compartment but that was alright because money was not what I needed. I picked up one of them, walked to one of the vending machines with pictures of sandwiches pasted on it. I unlocked it, then I picked out four boxes of them. Two of them were with ham and cheese, the other two were with tuna, Ri’s favourite. I always remembered to take some for Ri to repay him for his kindness in being my partner in crime.

                It was at this moment, though I did not know it back then, that everything that happened next would change my life forever.

                No, there was not any explosion, but I heard a creak from behind one of the refrigerators used for storing raw ham slices. Then, together with a siren, I heard a voice from the intercom, right outside the backdoor saying:

                “Attention all students! There has been a security breach at Section C. All students are to return to their dorms immediately and in orderly fashion, no one is to move outside except for teachers. The perpetrators’ location is unknown and moving away from your dorms will put you at a security risk. I repeat, all students are to return to your dorms immediately.”

                _Security breach? No that can’t be me, I didn’t trigger any alarms. Wait-_

                I turned away from the voice of the intercom that I thought distracted me from what was more important. When I looked back at the refrigerator, right there in front of my eyes I saw what looked like a man in what was mainly black coloured gear with a black mask. The belt on his black slacks hung a black Desert Eagle and a foot-long combat knife. Slung on his back was an assault rifle, probably a semi-auto. Based on his looks, he definitely was not a guard from the school that was about to catch me red-handed, for that bit I was relieved. However, I could not be any less horrified at the only other possibility of this man’s identity – a terrorist         

                I dropped the sandwich boxes on the ground and tripped as I walked backwards. I was so frightened. I had no idea what this man was going to do. I was taught that these terrorists were paranoid mass murderers, some of them even carry out suicide bombings, resulting in the deaths of hundreds. Yet, I could not just simply run. If the authorities noticed that the canteen was broken into, they would discover my fingerprints on the keypad and on one of the keys. I had no idea which was the better option, to face off an armed terrorist, or face severe punishment from the teachers and instructors.

                “Huh?”

                I just heard a gasp. It has been a full two seconds since I turned around and saw the man, but he did not reach out for any of the weapons he had on his belt. One of his hands, instead, reached for the edge of his mask and slowly pulled it off to reveal a face. It was the face of a young adult; he might have been in his early twenties. He had short black hair, like me, although his was a little longer at the sides.

                “Ben?”

                Did I hear him right? Was he calling me? At least I knew that was not the name I was given, yet there was no one else in the room. I tried to get up but somehow my shivering knees made me fall again.

                “You don’t have to panic, I’m not gonna hurt you,” the man let out a voice, though unconvincing, but more reassuring than any of the teachers I have known.

                “Wait, Ben,” he called that name again to me. “You don’t remember me?”

                The next thing I knew, I was infected with a disease called Confusion.

 


	3. Something's Wrong With Life

In Ri’s eyes

 

                “Kei! You’re alright!”

                The door opened, much to my delight. On each of his hands, Kei had two boxes of sandwiches.

                “Oh my! What happened to you?” said I when I saw Kei’s face, who had his eyes wide opened. Was he caught? No, he would be carrying serious wounds and bruises instead of stolen food. I was determined to figure it out.

                Kei dropped the sandwiches on the table. They seemed to be a bit mashed.

                “Did you drop the sandwiches somewhere? The box seems to be dented,” I commented anxiously, trying to get a word out of my dormmate.

                “Please let me get a hold of myself,” Kei finally answered, coldly. “I cannot allow myself to infect you with my confusion.”

                “Confusion? About what?” I replied, to which Kei refused to speak at first. I opened the box that contained the sandwiches with tuna inserted in them, then I picked one of them and started munching it. “Thanks, though, for this.”

                I was not used to this. Kei had always been the one starting the conversation while I was the one who listened most of the time, now my friend was in some sort of shock and I had to find some way to help him.

                “You can have half of the tuna sandwiches if you want, you’re the one who got punished after all,”

                After some minutes of silence, Kei, who turned around frequently on his bed finally spoke up.

                “I don’t quite understand why they would give us such comfortable bedrooms, and yet make us go through such horrifying school lives.” Kei got up and turned to look at me as I was still enjoying my sandwich.

                “I broke into the kitchen like I said I would,” Kei started. “I heard this announcement about some security breach.

                “When I turned around, I saw this man in black. He had a black mask and a variety of weapons around his clothing. He was a terrorist!”

                I was taught that the terrorists were the horrors and one of the Imperial Order’s biggest enemies. The instructors may have been terrifying, but if they were the ones teaching about how violent the terrorists could be, it must be true. I stared at Kei, waiting to hear what he would say next.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

 

“Who- who are you?” I spoke as I shivered.

“It’s me! Spear! It’s been so long!”

Why was he talking to me like we knew each other? I was just a kid in a military school. The only older people I knew were my teachers.

                “Look, calm down! I know this is hard to absorb,” said the man who called himself Spear. He removed his rifle and placed it on the ground, with its muzzle facing his own direction. He removed his pistol together with its holster and placed it on a table, then he pulled out his knife along with its sheath and placed it on the top of the refrigerator. It looked like Spear removed whatever weapons he had on him so he could earn my trust.

                “I don’t know what you’re called now, but back then I called you Ben. Yes, your name was Benjamin Cook,” Spear continued. “You and I were childhood friends. We went to the same schools, yes, we went to the same elementary school, middle school, and even high school!”

                “What the heck are you saying?” I cried softly. “Can’t you see I’m just a little boy?” At that time, in the way that I spoke, somehow, I had subconsciously reinforced what he was trying to point out to me.

                “Maybe you don’t realize this now, but you’re not a kid. You think like a high schooler, like an adult!”

                Like an adult? I had never expected anyone, except maybe Ri, to say something like that. It was true, I felt like Ri and I were the only ones who spoke and behaved like older people, but how does this stranger know so much more about me than I do?

                “You’re nineteen years old, just like me!” he continued passing on the facts. “One day, your parents were accused of committing some crime and the army killed them!”

                What.

                “They snatched you from your family and friends. That was when the Imperial forces decided to march into town and arrest anyone associated with any kind of rebellion. However, some of us came together and tried to search for you.

                “Many of us have died resisting the Imperial Order, but their efforts were not in vain. We got hold of some evidence about you. The government used de-aging technology to turn you from a man into a kid, then they manipulated your mind, removing all of your memories. You then became a specimen of one of the government’s latest projects – Project Reset. Its goal was to develop loyal soldiers who were raised for the sole purpose of killing whoever the government told them to.”

                “What?” I could not help but cut in at this very moment. If any other of the boys and girls were to hear this, they would definitely shout something like “that’s stupid!”.

                “So, my very existence here, is all part of a cruel project?” I asked. Although I hated the teachers and instructors in the school, I still was not ready to accept that the government themselves – the Imperial Order, were behind all this monstrosity that not only Ri and I faced, but the other students as well.

                “I don’t know, some of the things you say does make sense for me. Even so, how do you plan to convince me that you’ve once known me?” I demanded. I believed that only anyone who would make big claims would have some sort of proof that motivates them to do so.

                “I don’t know if it’s true for you now, but at least you once told me you had a fear of balloons.”

                “What did you just say?” my thoughts were thrown out from my mouth. Fear of balloons? I had only seen a balloon once, that was when I saw some military officials carrying pieces of wreckage, among them were fragments of torn balloons. It was later used in a lecture later that day when the principal was trying to teach us how evil these so-called terrorists or rebels were. We were taught that that was some rubber prop used by the Rebels for informal celebrations whenever they succeeded in some genocidal operation.

                It was not proof enough. However, at least I had something to experiment on in the future.

                Spear’s walkie suddenly emitted some static noise, followed by a blur, but audible voice.

                “Spear, get of here! The operation’s off, we’ve been had!”

                Spear grabbed his walkie and held it to his ear as he held onto one of the buttons with his index finger. “Oh shoot, this ain’t good. Charlie, I’ve found Ben!”

                “Ben? Wait, really?”

                “Yeah, I don’t know what to do, he is as we’ve expected,”

                “But we have to get outta here now!”

                Spear was disappointed. It looked like Spear had been wanting to see me for a long time, but that was not the main reason he came here for. He might not have said it, but I could see that he was having a hard time deciding whether or not to take me with him. I could not decide either if I was in his shoes.

                “Quick! You have to get moving now! They’re coming for you!” the Charlie on the walkie talkie raised his voice. Spear then turned to me, perhaps he had finally made a decision.

                “Ben, I’m sorry,” he said to me. “I was not expecting to meet you so easily, and I don’t think I have the right to say this, but I can’t take you with me. The security team is coming really close for me, if I take you, I’ll risk losing you, again.”

                Spear grabbed the weapons he laid down earlier, then he went off without waiting for me to answer. Were we really that close before? Then, why did he run off so quickly? Or maybe, he could not bear the sight of me getting taken away from him.

                “Someday, we’ll meet again, Ben,” said Spear, who then threw a what looked like a locket at me.

                I got a strange feeling, that those words would mean a lot to me some time in the future.

                I opened the locket, in it was what looked like a colourised photo. In the background of the photo was a scenery of a park, like the park at the centre of the capital. At the centre of the photo were two young boys doing a handshake. The boy on the right looked exactly like me, short, black and spiky hair, whereas the boy on the left looked like that of Spear’s.

                “Wait, what am I doing?” I thought. That man held the very answers to some of the greatest questions I had in life. What was outside the military school? Who was I? Who am I? Furious at the thought of being left with even more questions, I went out of the kitchen to look for him. It was not before the second turn I took that I started hearing sounds of gunfire.

                I peeked from the corner when I thought the shooting ceased. That same man who called himself Spear was lying on the ground. He seemed to be hit by one of those stun darts as he was unable to move his legs. Looking at the Desert Eagle that dropped from his right, he seemed to have exchanged a few shots before getting knocked out.

                “Take him to the Director of the Governing Board,” said one of the soldiers, whose uniform bore the Imperial insignia.

                Once again, I felt like seeing that very scene was going to hurt me one day.

                “Ah!” my thoughts screamed. “I forgot to lock the canteen back door!”

                I carefully retraced my steps without making them audible. I took the sandwiches I had taken out from the machine, then I locked it again before closing the backdoor behind me. I ran back to my dorm. I could not wait to share this shocking incident with Ri, I was so amazed and I was in so much denial, I could not even blink.

 

* * *

 

In Ri’s eyes

 

                I was trying to comfort my friend who appeared to have returned from an unforgettable incident. I even offered Kei to have the rest of the sandwiches while I took one of them, yet Kei could not help but let his shock run on. His eyes were wide open and his jaw was stiff ever since he first appeared at the door, initially to my relief.

                Kei and I laid in our respective beds; we had been silent for three straight hours.

                _So, we’re part of some government project? Maybe that explains our crappy life here._

We have always thought about it, the way we were made to live our lives, the way things are unfair for us, but for the first time, someone other than us had voiced it out.

                _Our lives have been rigged from the start, weren’t they?_

“Gah!” I swore as I jumped from my bed, I snatched the piloting textbook that was on the desk and tossed it onto the ground in front of me. “Screw this crap!” I turned to look at my friend, who stared back at me with frightful eyes.

                “I’m sorry, I’m not usually like this,” I said apologetically.

                “It must suck for you, you’re better at holding your emotions back unlike me.”

                I sat back on my bed and waited for his composure to return.

                “Kei,” I called. “Do you believe what he said to you?”

                It looked like Kei had finally calmed down, so I decided to ask him what he thought about it.

                “They were pretty big claims for someone I just met,” Kei answered. “If not, they kinda make a lot of sense.”

                There was nothing I could disagree about. None of the teachers or instructors have told us anything about where we were before attending pre-school. When asked about the outside world, we would just get told that there were criminal groups waiting to snatch us away and they would only be sent outside when they become Elite students or fully-fledged soldiers. There was no sure way of gauging the teachers’ claims. However, there was definitely something out there – the truth. Perhaps, the reason we were restricted from going out was not so that we would be protected, but rather that we would not know about the truth of our situation, and while that truth was yet unknown, it was definitely something that put both our lives in line for a horrifying destiny.

                “Kei,” I asked. “Are you going to do anything about this?” My question hit the mark.

                “I’m going to try and learn more about it. Maybe? If I have to sneak into the principal’s room and look at confidential files, I would,” Kei boldly answered.

                “If you do discover that everything that Spear told you is true, what are you gonna do?” I asked.

                “Maybe I’ll get out of here, or beat the teachers? At the very least I will wreck some havoc,” Kei said, with a little tinge of doubt. “That may be a scary decision to make, but if it’s true, then practically the entire school’s board of teachers and the Imperial Governing Board are against us, whether or not we decide to stage a rebellion. You don’t have to follow in my path if you don’t want to.” Kei reassured.

                “Well,” I replied, my face stern. “You’re the only friend I have here. Besides, is there anything better for us to be doing?”

                Kei burst out in joyous laughter.

                “Man, Ri, you are timid on the outside and strong on the inside. That’s what I like about you,” said Kei, his compliment temporarily put Ri in a few seconds of embarrassment. “Don’t worry, it’s not like we’re going to sneak into the principal’s office tomorrow and stage an assassination, although if we could do that, getting out of this school would be a piece of cake. Do you remember how we were able to break into the canteen via the back door? We started off simple – by observing, then trying slowly.”

                “What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “Where do you plan to get information from?”

                “Simple, I’m going to the library tomorrow.”

                “Ooh,” said I, impressed.

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

 

                “No Jad, you’ve got to release the accelerator pads when reaching the max speed!” a man politely scolded a misbehaving Jad. The reason for this happening was that Jad was one of those “teacher’s favourites”. Whatever he did or said, no matter how deserving of punishment they were, they were usually overlooked by the teachers. I have no idea how it became like this; it was not like this to begin with, I know I said earlier, teachers like Madam Genie are slave enforcers. This man is no less like her. Oh, and by the way, the man’s name is Mr. Ordna, our piloting instructor.

                Mr. Ordna tends to give me the cold shoulder. I think it was because I scored a ninety-six out of one hundred in the previous semester, giving myself the top rank in the piloting class. Even our batch’s top ranked student was second to me. Ironic, is it not? That someone like me would be doing so well in this subject. I know Mr Ordna, one of those bastardly grown-ups who play the favouritism game, had a lot of jealousy towards my talents. I guess it was fine this way, teacher’s and instructor’s opinions did not matter to me anymore. There’s something out there that matters more.

                The simulation room had thirty simulation-VR devices. I was among those who had to wait for our turn. Through the window, I saw Mr Ordna walking from Jad’s space to another girl, to whom Mr Ordna gave a thumbs up. This girl had golden blonde hair, tied up into an untidy ponytail at the back, her face might have had a little tinge of red at the cheeks, most of the rest of her skin was snow-white, but her legs seemed to be pretty muscular for any ordinary girl. I always wondered how she exceled in every other subject except piloting.

                “That’s our top-ranked student, right?” said Ri, noticing that I was looking through the window. “She’s pretty quiet for a _teacher’s dog_.” I thought that compliment was rather aggressive but I decided not to object.

                “Well every kid has a distinct personality; Jad likes being a show-off, Jin loves playing the cry-baby, Carl likes impressing girls, Xi is a professional liar. Maybe Kris is just a stuck-up with an innocent face.” I suggested, right before I heard footsteps coming closer to me.

                “Did I hear something, dog?” I turned to look with a taste of slight shock and disgust and saw that it was Carl. Bearing a wicked smile, he burst in some mild cold laughter. I knew Carl was feeding on the satisfaction of seeing me get scared, so I decided it was best to pretend that Ri and I were talking about something else. If kids were this sinister, I wonder what they would become when we become teenagers.

                Carl, however, saw that I was trying to evade him, so he, too, changed the topic. “You were looking at Kris, weren’t you? Don’t be an idiot, she’s not gonna fall someone like you! Huh! All you do is get beaten by teachers every day, ‘cause you don’t obey what they say, don’t you?”

                _What do I care about Kris? Have I even given any load about you scum bastards?_

                I had failed to realise the fact that Carl was not even properly eavesdropping on us, but he assumed we thought so. Even for someone as sneaky and wise as me, those Satanic words of his caught me off-guard. My inability to mix around with most of the kids in class undesirably made things worse. By unforgivable instincts, I raised my left fist and threw it in his direction. The knuckles struck his cheek, but missed his right eye, but my reaction was exactly as he wanted it to be. There was some murmur among the other students who witnessed what happened. Not long later, a bald man with glasses came walking towards my direction. I knew who this man was – Mr Jackvert, he was from the disciplinary board. He always carried a taser and a whip with him. He had glasses that seemed to emit some red light from the corner of the lens, I always wondered what he saw through it.

With his right hand, he struck my forehead as soon as he was in range, pinning me down on the ground with his boots, he said viciously.

                “This school is not for bullies like you. The next time you’re found doing this you could be sent for lashes in the principal’s room. He may even chop off that left hand of yours!”

                To my shame, students in the surrounding corridors were staring at me like I was some criminal, but there he was, Carl was laughing victoriously at the way I got embarrassed. I was ashamed of how I lost my temper and fell for his trap. As soon as the man left, Ri dragged me by shoulder with his hands to the restroom.

                “Look, it’s okay. You couldn’t help it I know,” Ri attempted to comfort me, yet I burst out at him.

                “Why don’t they just kill me now? Are they so cold-blooded that they want to use me for their pleasure?” I felt bad for Ri; he was the only person I could throw my anger onto.

                “It’s ‘us’, not ‘me’,” he corrected. “You’re not alone in this, okay?”

                After taking a few breaths and recollecting my thoughts, my sense of logic returned and I became rational again.

                “They are just cheap brainwashed idiots, they are not evil,” I forced this line out of my mouth. “Alright, let’s go,”

                It was our turn to use the simulation devices. Each student sat in a cockpit-like structure on a leather chair with backs angled at twenty degrees from the normal. On both sides were what looked like rubber sticks that could be toggled to the left, right, to the front and to the back by gripping them with your hands. The windows of each cockpit were apparently made of some polymer-reinforced glass that had the capability of emitting light, like any Light-Emitting Diode. With this, the students piloting the cockpit did need to look at a screen to know the status of the virtual plane that they were flying.

                The first half of the class was when we would practise piloting techniques and using the aircraft’s automotive features. We would be made to fly through a virtual sky. In the second half of the class, we would practise our combative techniques that included bomb-laying, air strike, and dogfights. I remember Mr. Ordna started a monthly dogfight tournament where we would sit in these VR devices and compete with each other in dogfights. In that first tournament, Ri and I won first and second, resulting in Mr. Ordna banning us from taking part in anymore of those tournaments. Not that I am angry about it, but he seemed to realized that Ri and I were actually trying to screw up his manifestations by spoiling the game and cooperating with each other to defeat everyone else. Well, it seemed that I did have fun.

                That was all for the classes that day. As soon as Ri and I got out from the training room, he said to me, “Remember what we planned to do?”

                “Of course, I haven’t forgotten,” I said, my lips shaped my face into that of a crafty smile.

* * *

 

In Ri’s eyes

 

                Walking past a thirty square-metre lake that masked the darkness corrupting the land were the two of us, we were in our lime-green school uniform. We entered through the doors of a large building covered with concrete walls, glass windows, and with some solar panels. What awaited us was a chamber. The chamber contained numerous pressurizing machines, made for the purpose of removing sound from the outside when any visitor entered the building. As soon as the machines were done carrying out their functions, the next door opened, allowing us to enter a vast hall – they were welcomed by a counter that had a few computer parts, and the rest of the hall was filled with long tables, shelves, computers, and books. This was the Tokyo District’s Imperial Library. Strangely, the Imperial Governing Board only allowed the Military School’s students to enter the library.

                This building was thirty floors high, it was said to contain records of the past, from the pre-imperial ages to the present. That was exactly what Kei and I came to find. From the start, we had always thought that perhaps living such a harsh life, just to become a soldier that fights blindly for the Nation, was not what we were destined to do. Kei’s encounter with the terrorist had since been the starting stone of our conviction. We came to the library to confirm the claims of the man who called himself Spear.

                Kei and I passed through the tables that had students sitting at them. It looked like some of them were busy memorising whatever they were assigned to, some of them were on their homework, but whatever they were doing, there was not a voice to be heard, only the sound of footsteps.

                _According to that man, Spear, Kei was taken away from his parents three years ago._

Kei and I found rows of bookshelves, we continued searching around until we got to the news section. We stopped to see when we got to the shelf which was labelled “2057”. Lined up on the shelf were three-hundred and sixty-five different issues of the Imperial News. I learnt once in class that the governing board in Tokyo had at some point stopped printing newspapers, but still kept a hardcopy of each issue in the library because they started to distribute them online in the cyber space. However, only citizens who paid a certain amount of National Credits monthly were allowed to read them.

                We browsed through each and every one of them, hoping to find something that would enlighten us on the truth. Kei agreed to check the newspapers that were issued from January to June of that year while I checked those that were issued from July to December.

                As soon as I returned the 22 July 2057 onto the stack of “checked” issues, I saw right in front of my eyes the headlines of the 23 July 2057 issue of the Imperial News:

                **_TRAITORS SHALL BE PUNISHED_**

**_At four this morning, the Imperial SWAT team stormed into the residence of two people suspected of funding the Chaos’ terrorists. The suspects, namely Roderick Cook (58) and Mary Cook (55), were to be in possession of a number of firearms including two .45 Berettas and a box of smoke grenades. The both of them were found guilty of violating the law as stated in Section 9 that unpermitted possession of firearms is illegal. Mr. and Mrs. Cook were sentenced to death, and their only son, Benjamin Cook (16), was taken into rehabilitation._ **

“Kei!” I called. The article I just read was the article we were looking for, I was sure of it. When Kei walked over, I handed to him the newspaper and pointed at the article.

                “So, there is a Benjamin Cook out there,” said Kei as he read. “They seem to think that the terrorists are part of the Chaos Territory. Regardless, anyone who opposes the law of the Nation is an enemy of the Nation.”

                “Why would they take their child away? I thought they would assign another sound-minded citizen with no criminal records to be his legal guardian?” I asked.

                “That is the procedure to be taken if the child’s parents died. However, they committed crimes, making them not only ineligible to be citizens, which who cares since they’d be getting the death penalty anyway, but their child loses the citizenship status as well. It does bother me that none of the books of the Imperial Law explain what kind of ‘rehabilitation’ the child would go through.”

                “Well, we now know that a Benjamin Cook exists,” said I. “How are we going to prove that you _are_ him?”

                I looked at the bewildered Kei who immersed himself in deep thought.

                “It’s safe to assume that that guy Spear was not lying, as his knowledge of the Cook family proves.  If we go by the information he gave, there’s only one other way,” said Kei, I could not help but notice that Kei was shivering, and it looked like he was not aware of it.

                “You mean the balloons?” said I, wanting to be sure.

                “Yes, I have no idea where to get them, though.”

                “I have an idea,” said I, then I ran to a desk with vacant computers. My fingers began to dance on the keyboard, the search engine that was originally in the screen transformed into a list of URLs. I pulled the mouse over and moved it until I saw a cursor on the screen reach the first URL. I pushed the left button of the mouse and another window materialised in the screen of the computer. I read it through as I heard Kei, whom I just discovered was trying to catch up with me.

                “A little slower man! The teacher might’ve caught us for running in the library!” whispered Kei, with a little tone of annoyance.

                “Look here,” said I, I was too engrossed in what I found that I ignored what he had said to me. “It seems that globophobia is a listed phobia. The Psychotherapeutic Research Department of the Governing Board is apparently conducting a study into this. It’s a side project that aims to eliminate phobias among soldiers to maintain their mental strength and resistance to mental diseases.

                “Also,” I continued. “Our school seems to have a Counselling room where psychiatric specialists try to treat students struggling with phobias.”

                “Hmm, that sounds quite shady,” said Kei with a mysterious grin. “Wait, that’s not the main concern now. What I need to know is if I _do_ have that phobia.”

                “We should be able to find that in the Counselling room. I wonder how the counsellor is like, if this government project is as they say – helping students with mental diseases, I can only hope they’d be a little nicer than most of the teachers we have.”

                Kei and I locked eyes.

                “Still, that isn’t enough to answer all our questions, we need to find out all about that de-aging stuff Spear told me,” said Kei, impatient.

                “We need to take our time,” I answered. “I don’t think we’re gonna find anything about de-aging technology in this floor of the library, we need at least a Year Seven student card to that access those higher floors.”

                “That’s true, we need to find another way in,” said Kei, concluding our secret operation for that day.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> As you might have noticed in this chapter and in the previous chapters, I added some things to clarify whose perspective I used whenever I changed the scene.  
> I appreciate any feedback, please let me know what you think in the comments section.


	4. Someone's Suspecting Us (Part 1)

In Kei’s eyes

                It was the last day of the examinations for that semester. That week began with those standard examinations where we were made to sprint while our speed was recorded. I still have no idea how those tests worked, but I passed. Then came the close-quarters combat (CQC) tests. We were made to fight with robotic figures that were programmed to spar, on the first round unarmed, and in the second round with a two-feet-long combat knife. It was not as simple as you, those robotic figures, though programmed to fight by a variety of algorithms, reacted quickly to any kind of attack a student made. I would say, though, that they really tested me on the basic techniques I learnt, for example, lunging, parrying, riposte, and the Japanese wakizashi arts which I just learnt this semester. I somehow passed that test with flying colours and got the fifth highest score. I did not think it was anything very extraordinary, after all the teachers and those other bullies never really cared if I scored well or not, but Ri was showering with me compliments from the very moment I came out from the examination hall. On the third day was the piloting exam. Again, not that I was fishing for my peers’ compliments, as you know I did not have many friends anyway, but I somehow managed to achieve the highest score again, quite many points ahead of the head prefect and the previous semester’s top scorer, Kris. I had to admit the piloting tests were getting harder, I almost threw up when I got back to my dorm.

                The last day had arrived and this meant some good news – more time for Ri’s and my secret research plans. But first, I had to pass that day’s firearms test. The shooting range was usually a hall separated by a red line. On one side of it were students in separate lines who fired at metallic target boards on the other side of the red line. That day, however, only one student was in the hall at a time.

                There I was, in Imperial fatigues. Strapped on the camo shirt that I usually wore on normal school hours was a fifteen-kilogram Kevlar vest. Other than the usual Imperial military shorts, strapped on my kneecaps were knee-plates that were usually worn during examinations. I think most of the other students might have polished their boots and cleaned them, but I could not give a damn about washing them. I went in, picked up a Beretta and a few magazines on a nearby table, as instructed by the examiner, then went and stood at the centre of the red line. Where I stood, surrounding me on the ground on my side of the red line was a semi-circular red line with a radius of one metre that indicated my boundaries of movement in the exam, I was not allowed to move outside of it during the exam.

                “Student ID K-one-one-nine, your exam will begin as soon as the buzzer sounds, please prepare yourself,” came a voice through the intercom in the hall. I turned once more to the sound proof window and saw that the other students of my age were all looking at me, then I turned back to my gun.

                With my right hand, I took one of the magazines, slid it into the empty space within the back strap, then I pulled the slide to cock it. With my right hand supporting the weight of the gun, and my other hand tight at the strap and my left index finger near the trigger, I was ready to face the exam I was most likely to fail.

                “BZZZZ” that was obviously the buzzer.

                A rectangular shaped target board, like the ones we usually practised on, appeared, and with the help of mechanical wheels at its base, it began to slide horizontally to the left and to the right. At its top was attached a rope and enabled it to be moved upwards and downwards as well. This board moved at random patterns, with speed that changed randomly, and changed directions with random timing. As soon as it was shot, it would disappear and be replaced by another board. My objective, was to shoot it as many times as possible in a duration of five hundred seconds.

                I placed my index finger at the trigger, such that it was directly behind the centre of the nail of my finger, as my firearms teacher taught. Holding the gun parallel and aligned with the direction of the pupil on my left eye, I chased the sight of the board and as soon as I was confident, I pulled the trigger.

                “BANG”

                I knew I missed when I saw that it did not disappear so without giving my arms any rest, I continued to chase for my shot, and as soon as I got it, I did not stop to shoot the next.

                There were different stages of the examination as I was asked to switch from my Beretta to an AK-47, then later to an SMG, and finally to a semi-auto sniper, as standardized by the school’s examination administrator. By the time I got out of the hall, I was exhausted. I saw the score on the scoreboard, it was fifty kills per five hundred seconds, the exact same value as the passing requirement. I was more than grateful, although it was not the first time. I remember Madam Genie slashing my back with a whip because I failed one of the previous firearms tests, and certainly did not want to repeat that experience.

                “Look! The scum has come out of the hall!” said of those boys standing around.

                “That’s sad, I wanted to see you get hit by Madam Genie!” said another boy, followed by some guffaws of laughter. I knew he was their ringleader, Jad.

                I returned a sour face at them, then turned back to look at the next student who took on the exam. I became a little more excited when I saw my dormmate Ri at the range.

                “That weird boy has gone to see his partner in crime,” taunted Carl, but my delighted eyes were too busy fixating themselves on my partner and had no time to exchange another look with those useless bullies.

                As soon as the buzzer sounded, I heard ricocheting gunshots, and almost without pausing, I heard gunfire over and over again. When I first knew Ri, I thought he was just shooting recklessly, but no, he missed no shot. We were told that the velocity of the target board ranged from a minimum of three metres per second to ten metres per second. However, few have been able to grasp this information with great understanding, especially when we were shooting the board from a perpendicular distance of thirty metres. Ri was one of those few. He did not just shoot with the strength of his fingers, hands and arms, he used his mind, his intelligence, the calculator that every human brain had, he was one of the few that mastered its usage.

                A wave of cheers initially began as the crowding students saw Ri acing through his examinations, but then Carl decided to spoil the mood by saying: “Huh, he’s just a novice compared to our head prefect Kris, what’re y’all cheering for?” The crowd quietened down as they did not want to be mocked by the teacher’s favourite. Nevertheless, I continued standing at the window, looking hopefully at my friend complete his exam.

                As soon as Ri came out through the exam hall’s main entrance, I ran towards him.

                “That was awesome, Ri!” I congratulated. “It amazes me that you can handle those guns,”

                “I told you before, Kei, it’s nothing special,” Ri laughed, trying to modest, it did not stop me from envying him. Although, what he said had some truth. The weapons used in schools were the cheaper classes, they were designed in such a way that they were easily manufactured and at the same time could be used by majority of the users, hence they had flaws. Ri once explained to me that the magazine remover was always on the right side of the gun, so most users just have to push it with their index finger to replace their used rounds. However, a southpaw like me would be forced to push the button with a finger on my right hand as my thumb could not possibly reach it, let alone my index finger, hence the reason why I took some time to get used to handling guns, as Ri explained. Ri also once told me that, according to one of the teachers, he had especially good eyesight, so he did not score well in exams because of hard work, though I still felt he always put in effort.

                We continued to watch the other students carry out their exams, until we saw Kris. The head prefect, as Carl had always proclaimed, performed with mighty excellence. She missed no shot and scored the highest in the firearms test. Ri turned out to be the third highest.

                “Everyone’s hero-worshipping Kris, yet she does not go on and on narcissistically like Carl or any of those boys,” I commented.

                “She’s pretty mysterious, have you ever heard her say a word?” asked Ri.

                “Now that you mention it, I don’t think I have. She’s a girl of few words. But still, she’s still one of those teacher’s favourites.”

                “Well, exams aside, why don’t we head over to _that_ place now?”

                We had decided beforehand that we would find a way to get into the counselling room to acquire more information on one of Spear’s claims – that I had a phobia of balloons. According to the maps in the school, the counselling room was located in the Elite Block, where students Year 7 and above are. To get in without breaking any of the school rules, we needed to have Elite ID cards. Thankfully, we managed to find another way in. Our previous weeks of work were not just practice for the exams, but research as well. It began with us finding out that there was a network of vents around the ceilings of the building. However, we only discovered this much. We could not proceed with our reconnaissance as there were students and teachers frequenting the area, but the right time had come. Semester examinations were over, this meant that would be a short break from classes. You would have expected these kids to be loitering and exploring around, but no, we were the only people doing that. Those boys and girls would sit in the library all day in their breaks, or stay at the shooting range from sunrise to sunset. At least, there were none appearing near the Elite Block, so this was our chance.

                We climbed the building on to a pipe encircling the block, we walked on them until we reached what looked like a hole, square shaped. The length of each of its sides was about half my height. The surface and the walls on this tunnel that we began to crawl in was made of some sort of insulator, maybe asbestos. We knew this, hence we decided to wear soft leather shoes to reduce the noise our footsteps would cause.

                “If I remember correctly, the counselling room was in the north-eastern corner, on the first floor eh?” Ri was trying to recall as he led the way, waving his flashlight around.

                “You forgot? Just take out your map and look,” I whispered back, to which Ri eventually did not have use his map.

                We reached the junction at which we had to choose between going forward, or turn left, or turn right. We went forward, and came to a point where the tunnel headed upwards to a height of about one point five metres, so I piggy-backed Ri so he could get up to the top where the vent stopped and continued horizontally. When he got up there, he stretched his hand out so I held tight to it like a rope and climbed my way up.

                We continued crawling until we reached another junction where we had to either turn left or right, and we chose the latter.

                “There won’t be anyone there right?” Ri was trying to confirm our safety.

                “It’s lunch time, the counsellors, won’t be,” I reassured him. We were expected to reach the exit of the vent that led to our destination within the next twenty metres of travelling.

                Just then, a high-pitched sound ricocheted off the walls of the vent from the opposite direction of our heading and deflected into our eardrums.

                _There’s someone there?_ I thought, and so did Ri, probably. As we neared the trapdoor leading to the exit, the noise became clearer and clearer.

                “Someone’s screaming!” Ri whispered, we continued to fasten our pace. Indeed, I heard a girl screaming as well, but it sounded like a girl instead of an adolescent female. We were not the only kids there.

                “There’s an adult in the room as well!” Ri whispered again, bringing a tingle of shock to my ears. An adult?

                I came closer to the exit, and I saw through the gaps between the railings on the trapdoor. There was a girl, she seemed to be of my age, and I was only able to tell that she had hair that reached to her collarbone. Her hands and feet were tied up, and she was crying in fear and was trying to roll herself away from an adult who seemed to be in a white lab coat and grey slacks. The man in the lab coat was holding something in his hand, and he was trying to bring it closer to the girl.

                “What’s the man holding?” I asked Ri, consulting his good eyesight.

                “It looks like a .45 calibre bullet.”

                _Huh?_

                And then I remembered what I read in the library the other day. Through some secret methodology of observation, the school authorities were able to accurately pinpoint those students who somehow possessed any form of phobia and they work on them to try and cure them of their phobia. The Imperial Governing Board was researching for a cure for phobias.

_Wait, something’s not right._

_Is this some psychotherapeutic operation that we’re witnessing?_

According to what I had read earlier, there were extreme cases of phobia whereupon encountering the object of fear, the individual with the phobia would lose his or her will to think and behave rationally and then give himself or herself entirely to emotions of fear and anxiety. This seemed to be like one of them. It looked like the girl had an extreme fear of bullets since she was trying to get away from the object the man held, or at least turn her sight away from it.

But the child seemed to be in pain and was facing emotional fear, and the apparent doctor seemed to be ignoring her screams of pain and calls for help. Come to think of it, why was she tied up?

                “Is this an operation? Seriously?” I whispered to Ri who was watching as well. We observed that the girl had some sort of fear of bullets, but what was the man doing? The doctor seemed to be making the kid scared.

                The kid’s screaming in pain went on and on, Ri and I were really curious to know the outcome of the operation. At least, until the man in the lab coat opened his mouth, answering our questions.

                “Oh, you scared little girl,” the man said, with a “you poor thing” tone, which turned completely sinister. “Keep crying, KEEP CRYING!”

                _WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?_ The curiosity within me inquired.

                We were not witnessing any sort of medical operation. The sight of the doctor cornering a helpless little girl, forcing her to just simply look at a bullet with her eyes was bizarre yet extremely disturbing. Neither Ri nor myself had seen the very act of a vicious crime being committed. We were often told that the rebels and terrorists of the Nation were criminals and cold-blooded murderers and the people of the Chaos Faction were barbarians, was that what they were like? Wait, what were we even looking at? We were in one of the major cities of the Imperial Order, where law and order was kept firmly to the point that there were no apparent criminal cases, but just what was going on in front of our eyes?

                The girl was backed to a corner, but the man went nearer with the bullet still in his hand. He seemed to be enjoying the sight of a helpless, frightened little girl screaming in pain. It was obvious the man’s apparent ego fed on the emotions of fear the girl had, and he enjoyed every bite of pain he was inflicting on her mind.

                _How evil can the government be? How evil can the high-ups and grown-ups be?_

_I thought those experiments they made were at least to protect the interests of the Imperial Order and protect the lives of its citizens, I never thought it’d be to satisfy corrupted individuals who not only desire power and status, but also those who lust for the fear of those they control!_

                Just when I thought things were bad enough, I saw the doctor holding the girl’s chin with his palm covering her mouth when she tried to look away and he waved the bullet in the air.

                “You useless shit!” shouted the man, who then exploded in guffaws of wicked laughter. He was abusing a child by taking advantage of her phobia, and on top of that, he was abusing his authority, intending to hide his inhumane acts with his status as a professor in the school!

                Madam Genie’s barbaric punishments were no stranger to me, but the way this sociopath brought pain to the girl was on a whole different level of monstrosity.

                I had to save the girl, it was our chance…

 

* * *

 

In Ri’s eyes

                “AAAARHHH!”

                I helplessly stared through the trapdoor as I saw a man approach the girl who had her hands and feet tied up.

                _If we break in and intervene, the odds of success are in our favour, yet there are undesirable consequences. We could be sentenced to some extreme punishment that may be even more terrifying than how they locked us up in the cells._

Frustrated, I swore with my mouth shut.

                _If we do nothing, that poor little girl would continue to face the terror of abuse._

_What a pathetic life this is!_

In the corner of his eye, I noticed a hand reaching for the trapdoor.

                _What?_

It was not my hand. I turned around to see what my partner was doing. I saw his face, Kei’s eyes had never been more bloodshot, his hand silently reaching for the trapdoor, and he appeared to be muttering. I went closer to him.

                “I’ll take down that monster! I’ll take down that monster! I’ll take down that monster!”

                _What is he doing? If he does that, we all will-_

“Hey!” I whispered; however, my voice did not seem to register in Kei’s ears.

                I rushed forward and had my own hand stretched out into the direction of the trapdoor, and as soon as I was in range, I grabbed the arm of my partner, and I clenched it tight. Kei finally turned around.

                “Why are you stopping me?” Kei said, his sounded like he was possessed by some supernatural being, his anger was aroused to the point that it seemed he had no idea who he was talking to, but I did not give in to his menacing aura, my hand persisted.

                “Let go of me!” Kei swung his grabbed arm violently, he swung it against the wall, registering pain into the back of my palm, forcing me to let go. Unfortunately, that act put us in some danger.

                I had no time to tend to the pain or the swell on my hand. I looked straight down through the trapdoor. It was as I feared. The loud bang on the wall of the vent alerted the man we were observing.

                “Hmm? Is there something up there?” I heard the man say. “I’ll be leaving you for a while, my dear, let me get my torchlight.”

                Kei and I raised our knees and crawled through the vents back the way we came. There was no time to lower our pace and maintain our stealth for fear of what the sadistic doctor had in his sleeves to silence his potential witnesses of his crime.

                _Will his partners or other teachers be waiting near the spot where we entered this vent? We’re damned if they are!_

Kei and I have been through a variety of Madam Genie’s and the Disciplinary Board’s punishments, but never once were we so anxious about it. Was it perhaps due to our wish that we would discover the truth of our identities before we lost the chance to do it? If we could just succeed, maybe our lives would have a little more meaning again.

                After much sweating, the both of us were back at the entrance that led us through the ventilation network. I looked around with much care. Fortunately, we were undetected.

                “THUD!”

                My body, reacting immediately to a punch at my cheek, fell head first to the other side of the ground.

I got up, turned to look at Kei, who looked at me with eyes he had never used before. Something I did earlier in the tunnel really infuriated Kei.

                “You blockhead, why did you stop me?” Kei roared. “We could’ve stopped that monster and save the girl!”

                I knew Kei was mad at me, but I wanted Kei to at least hear the rationale of my act.

                “Yeah, but we would’ve gotten caught, and that girl would continue to see the face of that doctor.” I tried to rebut, but my words were in vain.

                “YOU COWARD!” Kei swore with righteous anger. “You’re afraid! You’re scared, like all those stupid kids! Now that we’re safe out here, are you going to do nothing?”

                The muscles on my eyebrows cramped, my fist became round. Then, I realized. The trigger in me was pulled, and there was no way to reverse it.

                _What?! He’s calling me a scaredy-cat? How could he possibly compare me to those idiots?_

Before I knew it, I lost my cool. I knew at the back of my mind that what I was about to vomit in response would very probably result in the dissolution of our friendship, yet I allowed anger to take control of me.

“You calling me a coward?” I decided to let my own anger join our conversation. “After all the pain I endured together with you, were they just an illusion? In all that I did, I never had any intentions to live a life that pleased the teachers, because I knew that there was no point to it at all. I became one with you, one whom the teachers hated, and one whom the teachers brainwashed the other students to hate. I suffered all those with you. And now, you’re saying I’m just like them?”

                I approached Kei, my unsettling breath loud and clear for my partner to hear, my footsteps implanted on the surface of the soil in the grass that turned damp due to some tears, that I had subconsciously wiped off with my hand. And then, I blasted once more at Kei’s face.

                “You wanted to save that kid, have you ever stopped to consider what that might’ve done to your own life? What have I become to you? You don’t need me anymore do you? If you wanna waste your life being a reckless hero, then go ahead! I’m going back to my dorm without you! And don’t come crying when you get caught!”

                I gave the grass one of my last spats before turning around and walking off, into the direction of our dormitory. I refused to give Kei another look, I did not desire to know his response. All I wanted then, was just to shut my eyes from the reality I was just shown.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                I sat on my bed with my back against the wall. The bed next to mine was empty because Ri was asleep at his desk. His chin rested on the back of his palms while his forehead rested on the surface of his table. The gap between his chin and forehead; in the space directly beneath his eyes was a puddle of water. This was Ri when I returned to our dorm, and when I saw him, I knew deep inside him, he was still scared.

                And I was no different.

                About ten minutes earlier, Ri was showing me the knives of the feelings he kept deep inside himself. I was busy feeding my anger by twitching the muscles in my hands and arms, but I did not intend to hurt Ri, the one and only true friend I had.

                I thought I was being righteous, I thought my words to Ri were the right things to say, but what he said next skewered deep into my skin, heart and soul, and his response was more painful than any lash or verbal abuse I had ever received. Of course, it was not painful because I was innocent, but because I was wrong.

                _Maybe Ri was right, even if we were able to stop the man with our own strength, who knows what crafty lies he would be able to make up with the use of his position as one of the high-ups?_

_Oh no! What have I done?_

I turned around, hoping to give an apology to Ri, what he was nowhere to be seen. For once, I was hit with something more painful than any kind of abuse those grown-ups could give.

                _If Ri believed that I really went on to save the girl and get caught, what would he do to himself? Could he live on his own?_

I picked up speed and ran my way back to our dormitory. I did not stop to see if there were any teachers, I raced my way up the stairs, galloped through the corridors. When I came to our door, I thought I heard irregular sounds of sniffling. I placed my ear next to the door, and then I heard sounds of wailing. I decided to sit outside and wait for everything to be over. I did not check to see if Ri locked the door, even though I had the spare key in my pocket, but I concealed my presence from him for fear of making him anymore angry.

                I sat quietly outside; I was not sure for how long. From one end of the corridor, I saw a few boys approaching me. I recognized their faces.

                _Damn it, Ri’s gonna know I’m here._

“Hey now, isn’t that the bully?” said one of them, whose name was Xi.

                “Woah, what happened to you, did you get punished again?” Carl joined in the taunting, and then all three of them laughed. I kept silent; I was not in a mood to pick a fight with anyone.

                “Look, the dog’s not talking, you’re probably right, Carl,” said Jad. I did not want to start an argument in the dormitory block.

                “I just lost my key, and I’m waiting for Ri to come back,” I merely said.

                “Ah, you poor little kid, if you can’t find it, the Disciplinary Room’s gonna be your dorm!” said Carl, then they finally left me as they continued laughing.

                As soon as they were out of sight, I got up and unlocked the door with the key I had. I opened it, and that was when I saw Ri at his desk asleep.

                _I was hoping I could apologize to him, but now he’s asleep. Should I wake him up?_

I heard the bell ring, signalling our time for dinner. I dared not wake my friend up, but I would not be able to get an extra set of meal for him as the school rule forbade it. I decided to take my own share of dinner and share it with Ri. I was okay with it; I did not have the appetite to eat anyway.

                Dinner was a foot-long baguette lined with some tuna and cheese. I rushed back home as soon as I overcame the crowding traffic. But when I entered the room, I saw that the chair Ri sat on was empty, the little puddle of tears was still there.

                _Where could this guy have gone to?_

                I was too tired to think. I had undergone consistent intense training for the past week, almost every day before the break began, I had been at shooting ranges, simulation rooms, and at the gymnasium, doing our mandatory daily thirty push-ups. When the exam was over, all the fatigue from those harsh practices had come back to possess me.

                With a butter knife, I split the baguette into two, leaving the other half under an aluminium foil. As soon as I was done with my own portion of dinner, I got onto my bed. The loneliness made me forget what my dinner tasted like.

                _Is he gonna come back? I wonder what he’s up to._

That question ricocheted off the walls of my mind, as I slowly teleported into the realm of sleep. Never had I fallen asleep alone.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for keeping you readers waiting. I was hoping I could post a chapter for each for the past few months that have gone by since my last chapter, however I had been busy adapting to new Uni life. I will continue to write, slowly, but steadily.


	5. Someone's Suspecting Us (Part 2)

 

In Kei’s eyes

The next thing I knew, the sun was up again. I got up from the bedsheet and pillows that tugged me in when I was in my dreams, and then I remembered everything that had happened the day before. I turned to look at the bed beside me to wake him up.

                _Huh? He’s still not here?_

                Subconsciously, I was fearful at the sight of Ri’s absence. I began to wonder about the immense danger that my words had been. I should have learnt to control my words, in these years of school I had learnt to control everything but that.

                _I hope he’s not doing anything dangerous to himself._

My imagination went high on its own, I started to conjure thoughts and possibilities so crazy that they themselves would not even approve of my sanity. But I managed to restore my grip on myself when I saw that the aluminium foil I used to cover Ri’s share was gone. The plate that had the other half of the baguette seemed to have disappeared as well. I heaved a sigh of relief, and then I jumped in shock again when I saw the clock on the wall.

                _Oh no! It’s eleven o’clock!_

It did not take me long to realise that I was in no danger as my semester break was still ongoing.

                _Wait, then where could Ri have gone to?_

Forgetting that I missed breakfast, I rushed off to the centre of the campus, where most of the boys and girls would hang out, especially at this time since there were no classes going on for that week. After taking a quick peek around me, I rushed off quickly to avoid catching any unwanted attention.

                _Like most of the other kids, Ri usually spent his time in the library during semester breaks. Could he have gone there?_

I decided to give my guess a try, so I ran off to the library block. As I got nearer, the door opened and a student came out. It was Ri. I increased my pace so I could get him to notice me, and he did, to my delight. He turned around to see if anyone was near, and then he saw me. I was expecting him to grunt with some disgust, but instead he looked at me and with some excitement, he called out.

                “Kei! I’ve been wanting to speak to you!” he said.

                _What has gotten into this guy? I thought he was angry with me last night._

“Huh? What is it?” I slowed down, hypothesizing that he might have wanted to go back into the library with me. “Wait, what have you been doing since this morning?”

                “Since last night actually,” Ri corrected. “I’ve been figuring out the internal vents of the library.”

                “Huh? Wait, we are only allowed to the first ten floors of the library, does that mean-

                “Yes,” Ri seemed to have been able to read my mind, or maybe it was the other way around. “There is a way to sneak into the higher floors of this library.”

                It did not matter if I was sneaking in or getting a permit to enter, if I had the chance, I was going to take it.

                “Do you remember that day where we browsed through the shelves for those newspapers? If we go way beyond those shelves, we would reach a blind spot of the cameras. That is the edge of the library, it is also where all the ventilation and air conditioners are. The ventilation tunnels might not fit an adult, but they can fit kids like us.

                “You’re amazing, Ri,” I complimented.

                “Well, when do you wanna get up there?” Ri asked.

                “We’ve been waiting for this opportunity, after lunch, shall we?” I answered as soon as I heard the bell ring, signalling the time for lunch.

                Ri nodded his head, and then headed off to the canteen. I was excited, for once the school looked generous with that one week break per semester. The only things we needed to attend were the three break times.

                I suddenly seemed to have forgotten something very important, but when I saw that Ri was rushing for his lunch, I decided to go as well.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                As soon as we swallowed down our lunches, we disappeared from the canteen where everyone else continued to gather.

                We went past the spot where we looked for newspapers, and to the walls at the other end. Ri was right, there was an empty floor, perpendicular to the rows of shelves that contained the library’s very books, and there were no cameras.

                I looked around and I found a ladder shaped in a triangular prism where one side supported the other at the top. That was the ladder for students who needed to climb to get any book from the top shelf, which were barely even used at all.

                “Hey Ri, do you think there will be cameras in the vent itself?” I asked. I doubt Ri was able to find out the security system that included the ventilation system itself, so I needed some reassurance.

                “I don’t think anyone could possibly install cameras in there, the vents can’t even fit an adult. Besides, there were no cameras in the vents in that block we sneaked into yesterday, right?”

                I felt a chill up my spine and I remembered what it was caused by. I forgot to apologize to Ri. I was not sure if Ri’s mentioning of that incident sparked any grudges he had against me since that time, and I was not able to say a thing, until he broke the silence.

                “Well, the floor we are aiming to sneak into is the twentieth floor, the floor that contains information on de-aging. It’s gonna be a long climb, so we should probably get started.”

                It looked like Ri had totally forgotten about our quarrel, or maybe he was just focused on getting to that floor of the library. I, too, thought that was the more immediate concern at that time, so I decided to hold back my apology and wait until we were done sneaking. I went over, grabbed the ladder and placed it such that the top was right beneath the vent entrance. Ri climbed up first, and with his both his hands he pulled out the cover which had metallic blinds on it. Until Ri’s entire body had entered the tunnel, I followed as well, with my flashlight I had brought from my dorm.

                Just like the tunnel we climbed in the Elite Block, the tunnel walls were made of some cheap heat insulator, its width slightly bigger than our own shoulders, and high enough only for us to bend our knees and crawl horizontally. It was an arduous climb, I was not getting tired, but I did not have any knee-guards on, and my kneecaps were getting sore.

                I am amazed at how Ri has the ability to compute his own radar without the help of a map. It was after some tens of minutes that I thought we were going in circles, and then it occurred to me that Ri somehow knew his way.

                “You sure are good with directions, aren’t you?” I whispered, trying to get Ri to slow down as I crawled my knees to their limits.

                “Yeah, somehow,” he replied. “Look, I know you’re getting tired, but we still need to maintain our stealth, try not to stomp too loudly.”

                _Man, he’s strict._

“Oh right, give me a break,” I stopped my “knee”-steps, and I huffed and puffed, then I fell chest down on the surface of the squeezy tunnel.

                “Hey, what did I just tell you?”

                “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry,” I barely conjured. “Just give me a few seconds.”

                _How does Ri have so much more endurance than me? I thought I was physically stronger than him. Maybe he’s really determined to get up there._

I got on my knees again, forgetting that the top of the tunnel was right above me, I accidentally hit myself, making another loud bang.

                “My, my, Kei, you’re pretty reckless,” scolded Ri. “Well, we’re somewhere between floors, so I hope we’re beyond any hearing range.”

                I rubbed my head, soothing the pain, then I continued on.

                _Did Ri forgive me for what happened yesterday? He seems to be in his usual mood._

Ahead of us, as we continued our journey, we found that the tunnel would lead us upwards. The height of the tunnel went up to about three metres tall, I wondered if it meant that we were going up to another floor.

                “Like I said, earlier, don’t make a sound,” Ri reminded. “Right around us is probably the emergency staircase.”

                I nodded my head. As soon as we reached the turning point where the tunnel would go upwards, I lowered myself for Ri to climb onto my back. As soon as he got onto me, I stood straight up, I had earlier tried to tiptoe so that Ri would find it easier to get onto the edge where the tunnel would go horizontally again, but he advised me against it, he did not want to risk me falling, and revealing ourselves.

                Hands first, Ri pushed himself further with his soft leather shoes, he did not jump, but rather he gave himself the momentum to fully get onto the path. As he soon as he was up there, he turned around and stretched his hand to my direction. I pulled his with both my hands, then slowly, I placed both my feet softly on the wall. Ri pulled back slowly, and not long later, both of us were back to crawling. All of that leg-soring movement, just to move up one floor of the library.

                Before I knew it, we left drops of sweat on the path we crawled on, thankfully it was not as hot as we thought it would be.

                “Alright, follow me until we reach that corner over there,” whispered Ri as we got onto what we thought was the twentieth floor. I tailgated Ri as I was excited to get on my feet again. My back hurt, and I needed to stretch my legs. When we reached the said corner, we found what looked like another trapdoor on the lower surface of the tunnel. We saw through the blinds, an empty space, like that edge of the library where we first entered the ventilation network. It was empty, and we did not hear any noise, no flipping of pages, no footsteps. In the library, you could hear these noises from one end of the library to the other.

                I saw Ri pull out some device, it was a foot long, rectangular in shape, and was thin enough to slide between the blinds of the cover. Ri seemed to peak into it with his right eye, and he turned it around carefully.

                _What? That’s a periscope!_

“Hey, where did you get that from?” I asked softly. I could not imagine Ri going to any teacher just to borrow a device like that.

                “I kept this from one of our pre-school projects, the one where they made us create a periscope.”

                _Pre-school? I couldn’t even be bothered to remember any of that time._

“Alright, as I had assumed, there are no cameras,” said Ri. With his hands, he gripped the blinds of the trapdoor and gently raised it, then he placed it on the surface of the tunnel in front of him. As expected of my vigilant friend, he made no sound in doing all that. “We don’t have a ladder to climb onto, so land as smoothly as you can.”

                With legs in first, Ri hung onto the edges of the trapdoor with his hands until, then he dropped himself down. I followed suit. I looked around and saw that the area was dark. I soon as I got up, Ri pulled me by my shirt to the side of one of the bookshelves. I wanted to ask Ri what the matter was but he placed his index finger at his nose. Ri seemed to peek past the shelf into the direction of the other side of the library.

                “This entire floor seems to be deserted,” said Ri. “I was expecting a few people to be here. Anyway, let’s go.”

                We ventured from shelf to shelf. I looked at the titles of the books and saw that they were levels different from those that were in the lower floors. In the first ten floors that were permitted to enter, there were books on the history of Imperial Order, the Statutes and Laws of the Nation, and books on the Chaos Territory, the terrorists, and many more. The teachers in the school had made us read them countless times, whenever the semester break arrived I would go back to my dorm, jump onto my bed and heave a sigh of relief, knowing that I would not be reading any of those nonsense for the next few days.

                _Anatomy? A Compilation of Reports on Advanced Stem Cell Research?_ I thought as I browsed through the titles of books that were on the shelves.

                Speaking of which, I did remember Madam Genie saying that students who graduate and enter the classrooms of the Elite Block would enter a streaming stage called specialisation. The students themselves don’t really have a say in this but the school decides what kind of profession they specialize in, according to a ratio.

Some of these students become medical trainees, where they eventually graduate and join the medical team on the battlefront. I heard that they were so competently trained that they could completely heal fractures within hours and save people from fatal injuries. I know that sounds cool, but if you asked me, I felt that the Governing Board only wanted an army of absolutely loyal soldiers who fought and returned to battle immediately as soon as they recovered.

                Some of those students became engineering trainees, some of whom join the weaponry research group, and the rest would join the troops at the frontlines and solve technological or damage control issues. War vehicles were expensive, and they needed professionals who knew how to maintain them.

                Of course, the school’s directing board always makes it such that ninety percent of the students graduate as elite soldiers, who not just knew how to brawl with knives, handle firearms or basic vehicles like us elementary students, but they also knew how to use advanced equipment like jetpacks, nerve-linked armour and electromagnetic railguns. The Governing Board designated certain parts of the outskirts specially for Elite Students to train in, which was why on some days there were fewer students in the Elite Block.

                But that did not explain the absence of people in that floor of the library at that time.

                “Everything on physiology and anatomy should be in this section of the library, let’s start searching,” said Ri. I nodded in return.

                A lot of those books looked complicated. We were taught some basics on biology, yet I had some difficulty reading them.

                “Are you sure we doing the right thing? I think we should’ve started off with a simpler read,” I complained.

                “Read slowly, Kei, take your time, don’t just flip through the pages,” said Ri.

                _Man, this is gonna take ages. Well, if they do return and turn on all the lights, we could just steal some of these and read them when we’re back in our dorms._

As my line of sight lasered across the titles of books written on each of their spines, I sighted one that seemed to catch my attention.

                “ _Dealing with Brains”?_

I stretched my hand out to pull the book out, then with my other hand, I switched on my flashlight as I turned to the first few pages of the book. I could not be more disappointed at the tiny font size the book was printed with, but since Ri told me to take my time, I guess I did not have a choice.

                I somehow managed to scheme through the first thirty pages of the book with understanding. To put it in a nutshell, the book was a guide for Elite Officers when interrogating prisoners of war. It gave precise instructions, which I could not be bothered to know, on to what degree of which type of emotion to use when questioning. It also taught readers (interrogating officers) methods on enticing prisoners or suspects into giving in information, by physical and psychological means. Most of the methods they introduced were all about bruising, bleeding and what not.

                _Now I understand why normal Imperial Citizens are not allowed into this library, look at all these cruel and horrifying content! If they got to see things like these, they’d start to have their loyalty to the Nation shake._

I turned back to the front cover of the book. That was when I realized, that the book had what looked like a chop on it, except that it was printed. I saw the words on it, “For Military School use only”.

                I decided to flip on to the last few pages of the book, with a pinch of curiosity I wondered who would write vicious books like these. At the top of one of the last twenty pages was written, “References”.

                This book was written with the help of other sources. My eyes scanned from top to bottom, before turning the page, and then repeating the sequence. I noticed that some of those listed references were books that were not in the library. That was when I discovered something unreal.

                “ _De-aging Report 003”?_

I felt my nerve impulses raced from one neurone to the other. If I were a bit more reckless I might have shouted with the book dropped to the ground.

                “Hey Ri!”

                “Shh, you’re a bit too loud!”

                “Look at this!” I shoved the reference page in front of Ri’s face, with my pinkie pointed at the word “De-aging Report 003”. “We need to look for this!”

                “I don’t think the library keeps research documents, most of them are confidential, but we’re here, so why not search for it?”

                We went around, we went from one shelf to the other. There were scientific reports, some that ranged from electromagnetic shield experiments to hydrogen-powered engine experiments. Before I could get a grip on time, minutes were wasted with us walking around and browsing through the books on the shelves. None of them had anything to do with the words “De-aging”.

                “Did you find anything?” Ri came and asked. He knew where I was due to my shining of my flashlight on the books.

                “No luck,” I said.

                _Thud_

                I suddenly heard what might have sounded like a footstep. It finally occurred to me that we had been running around without trying to soften our steps. That floor that we were in may had been dark and empty but it was not safe to assume that we could do whatever we wanted to do.

                “Three o’ clock!” I whispered anxiously. We had our flashlights switched off and we hopped to the backs of the shelves for cover. With no words spoken, our ears were ready to prick any time we heard more noises.

                _Were there people here all along? Why couldn’t they just turn on the lights?_

I swept aside the idea that school authorities had us on watch. I doubt they knew what we were up to. And unless Spear had spilled it, without me knowing, I doubt they knew about our encounter with him either.

                We waited a full half-an-hour, we did not say a word. We had our eyes on both sides of the shelves, there were no signs of life other than the both of us, there were no lights, no signs of movement. I began to calm down and think that we were just imagining things.

                “Maybe it was just a book,” Ri broke the silence, to which I nodded.

                We peeked around for a while more, than we stepped out of our cover. It was no later that we forgot the “thud” sound and we continued in our search for the report. We went from row to row, the lines of our eyes shifted from one book to the other. We did these for the next few tens of minutes. Our eyes, unused to the dark, began to swell.

                _We’re living in the second-half of the twentieth century, why do we have to look through these wooden shelves for some retarded report?_

_Wait a second, isn’t there a computer on this floor?_

I turned around, ran to the other side of the floor. By this time, I had totally ignored the possibility that we were not alone. Nothing else mattered, nothing but the search for the truth. I stopped as soon as the light from my torch displayed a desk with some monitors on it.

                _Why didn’t I think of this? We should’ve resorted to this an hour ago._

I reached for the main switch on one of the computer’s CPU, the monitor brightened up. It looked like the mains were left on. After some intermission of buffering, the screen on the monitor finally displayed what appeared to be a box with a space to fill in. Obviously, this was the password panel. I turned to the drawers and cabinets around the computer, I opened them all and pulled out every sheet or fragment of paper I saw.

                _Hopefully the librarians don’t memorise their password_. I prayed.

                The light I used to illuminate the darkness around the desk suddenly vanished. And then I realised that I had not changed the batteries in flashlight for almost a year.

                _Oh crap! Why now?_

                The flashlights Ri and I used were powered by rechargeable lithium cells, the sad thing about was that by the time we knew it, we had forgotten the last time we had to change the batteries. If I had been more careful, I would have brought spare cells.

                _I guess I have no choice._

I looked around again, then I saw the light from a distance, it was Ri’s flashlight.

                I tiptoed my way back into the area with shelves again. I passed by the bookshelves again and brought myself nearer to the light from Ri’s flashlight.

                “Hey Ri!” I whispered as softly as I could, to which Ri gasped in shock and jumped back.

                “Oh! It’s you! I thought there was someone creeping on me!” exclaimed Ri.

                “Ahah,” I apologized. “I’m sorry about this, but my torch ran out of battery life, I need yours.”

                I nonchalantly grabbed his torch while saying the words, “Follow me.”

                “Wait! Where’re you going?” I barely heard Ri saying, but I knew he was keeping up with my footsteps.

                I returned to the desk I was searching earlier. With Ri’s flashlight, I looked around more thoroughly this time. My eyes fixated on any word that may have been written on the papers that I found.

                “So, this was what you tried to do,” said Ri, my guess was he saw the illuminated screen on the monitor. He decided to help me by sweeping all the papers that he saw and hand them to me to check.

                It took us a while, and then we got it.

                “Hey, look at this,” I said, Ri turned his head towards my direction and stopped whatever he was doing. “It’s got some letters and numbers written on it.”

                Indeed, it was, it seemed to have been written with an early twentieth century lead pencil. Written were the letters and numbers: “x0j3o2h5”.

                “There is no actual limit to the number of characters that can be used as the password, we would have taken another five years, or maybe a decade to figure this out, and that’s not considering the fact that we only have three chances every time we switch on the CPU,” Ri commented.

                “Why would they dump it here? Or even be given the password in this manner?” I asked.

                “Maybe it’s for safekeeping. The only adults here are the teachers, I don’t think they expect students to break in, though, I’m surprised none of the students from the Elite Block have tried.”

                _Maybe it’s because by the time we reach the Elite phase of school, the fear and loyalty to them that they want us to have would by then be completely instilled in us._

“Well, anyway, I guess we’re pretty lucky.”

                I typed the password and another window appeared. On it was something like a search engine like the one we used that day on the lower floor in the library. I typed in the words “de-aging” and pushed the “enter” button. The search engine began to buffer as it browsed through the books that were contained in that floor. Then, it refreshed, displaying the picture of one book. Labelled on it was “De-aging Report 001”.

                _The fact that the third report is not here must mean that they are some classified documents._

I double-clicked on the file, and a new window opened. The file contained fifty pages. In that dark place, Ri and I flipped through the pages of the e-book. To summarise everything that was written, the Biochemical Department of the Imperial Order were conducting de-aging experiments for the purpose of longevity. They experimented on animals. The results were not what they were expecting. They spent years and years on the prototype devices they developed, but not one of the animals were successful in the de-aging process. The experiment was deemed a failure and had to be halted. Ri decided to search up more on the report and he found out that the report was made in 18 February 2050, apparently just three days after the Imperial Governing Board carried out an entire change of staff, so the newspapers said. The report was apparently the reason the Governing Board had to be changed as it exposed some of their shady doings. According to the papers, too, years later a coup was launched by the terrorists with the help of the Chaos army, and then it was announced that the Governing Board had another “change of staff”.

                _But then comes the question, why is there a third report?_

“If the Government is secretly continuing the experiments, there must be something they’re trying to hide from us,” Ri commented. “Maybe there was something that happened to the animals they experimented on?”

                I pulled the mouse over and clicked the page that displayed the results of the experiment in the De-aging Report 001. The next few pages were filled with a box with two columns, the first one labelled “specimen number” and the next one labelled “observation”. The species of the animal used was not listed, but we got to know what class and order or from which animal kingdom the animal was from. We started to read from top to bottom, other than the words in the observation column, “Death due to irregular blood pressure”, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

                At least, until we came upon a specimen listed as a “Primates”. On the observation column was written, “Survived one round of activity, but no sign of de-aging detected. The specimen could not recognize its own offspring from another. Died in the second round due to irregular blood pressure”.

                “Was this what they were interested in?” I whispered.

                “Very likely,” said Ri.

                I was heavily invested in all this. I was surprised they would even have something like this on the library, sadly we would be unable to access the other reports.

                “I think it’s time we moved,” said Ri. I was reluctant to move away, after all, we worked hard to find our way up here to this part of the library.

                _We did discover more about the things that Spear had told me, but if we keep trying to explore any further now, it’d put us at risk of being suspected._

“You’re right, let’s go,” I replied, I switched off the CPU, dumped all the sheets of paper back into the cabinets that we searched. Then we quietly made our way back to where all the bookshelves were until we were at the other end of the floor, where we came from.

                Like we did on the ground floor to reach here, we took out one of those ladders they kept in the cleaner’s room and placed it right beneath the trapdoor we came from. Ri went into the vent first followed by me.

                “What time do you think it’d be?” I asked as soon as we entered the vent.

                “Erm, it should be… OH NO!” Ri exclaimed as he switched on his flashlight. “We’re going to be late for dinner!”

                Ri hypocritically crawled his way into the vent and totally forgot all about the “maintain stealth” stuff he told me earlier. Apparently, Ri was a more “rebellious student” than I thought.

                “Don’t worry, silly! You forgot? I could always break into the canteen’s kitchen if I wanted to!” I tried to calm Ri down, but the ricocheting noise of our knees hitting the surface of the vent hindered my voice from reaching him.

                _Well, I don’t think he’ll lose his way, even if he’s in a rush._

True enough, we did find ourselves back at the ground floor of the library again, and my knees did not swell as much as the uphill climb.

                “That’s the trapdoor we came from,” said Ri as he pointed to the front, his flashlight pointed away from it. He handed his torch to me, then had both his hands on the railings of the trapdoor.

                “Hey, don’t you wanna check first and see if the coast is clear?” I whispered.

                “Don’t worry, the library closes before dinner!” said Ri as he lifted the trapdoor open. The ladder was as it was when we left it there earlier. Although with speed, Ri carefully placed his feet on the top of the ladder and slowly got to the bottom, I followed suit. As he said, the library was empty and dark.

                “But then, how are we going to get out? The main door is locked,” I asked.

                “There’s a window in the toilet that can fit kids like us, we could try getting out there.”

                I followed Ri, who seemed to have his line sight on the ceiling occasionally, which I presumed was to check for cameras. After some trotting, we found a door with the sign “toilet” on it. Ri opened the door, and as he said, there was a window, but the glass pane was guarded by a brass grill that could not be breached without some sort of firearm. I turned to look at Ri to see if he had a frown on his face, but no, he simply pulled out a screwdriver from his pocket.

                “I’m sorry, but I need a lift again,” he said to me. I knew what he meant, he needed height to reach the window. I let him climb onto my back, then I straightened my own. I could see from the top of my view that Ri was unscrewing the screws that supported the grill.

                “You know, I envy you a lot, you sure do your homework,” I complimented.

                “Yeah, erm, it’s good to always do a check first, you know,” he replied, with a slightly embarrassed tone. “Alright, Kei, I need you to be prepared, this grill is pretty heavy.”

                “Go ahead and bring it out.”

                I lowered him down so he could place the grill on the floor, then he climbed onto me again so he could get into the space at the window. Ri opened the glass window, and he looked out, then he turned to me and said, “It’s clear.”

                He stretched his hand out for me to pull so that I, too, could get in through the window.

                “How are we going to place the grill back there?” I asked.

                “We could just come back here first thing in the morning,” said Ri.

                “Ah, right,”

                We landed on the grass. The sky was dark as we expected, and dinner time was probably over. Which meant, I had to break into the canteen’s back door again.

                _ZAP_

                “Argh!”

                I turned to look beside me; I saw Ri on the ground.

                “Ri! What happened?” On Ri’s right shoulder, I saw two pins, joined together by some kind of wire.

                “A stun dart? OH NO!”

                Somehow, right when we thought we were safe, they were actually waiting for us.

                A few men in security uniform appeared, they had us surrounded. I could not run even if I wanted to. They closed in on us as another silhouette appeared.

                “I’m sure the principal would be displeased to see you students breaking the rules of the school, Keiichi and Ri,” a familiar voice seemed to come from the silhouette.

                “Mr Ordna!” I uttered in escalating fear as I pulled myself nearer to Ri’s unconscious body.

                “Have you forgotten that the librarians know who entered and who left the library?” said Mr Ordna. “And that’s not just it, you even broke into the higher floors, entering restricted area, didn’t the both of you?”

                _How did he know?_

“I do hope the both of you are prepared to face the consequences of breaking rules. Confine them in the dungeon!”

                _Is this it for us?_

I felt someone trying to shake my legs, I looked and saw that it was Ri. I heard him try to say something to me.

                “Run!”

                At that point I had no idea what to do. I had to survive, but I did not want to run without my partner. Unfortunately, refusing to answer allowed someone else to answer for me.

                _ZAP_

                I found myself on the ground soon enough, I turned to my shoulder, my eyes were struggling to open, but I managed to see two pins sucked into the skin of my shoulder, before losing sight of everything but hopelessness.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for reading!  
> I just wanted to let you know that I may not be adding the next chapter anytime soon as I will be busy with exams and assignments, however, once I'm done with them I will get back to writing the next few chapters!
> 
> The next chapter won't be a "Someone's Suspecting Us (Part 3)", it will be "The Solid Truth"  
> Hope y'all look forward to it!


	6. The Solid Truth

In Ri’s eyes

                “Gah!”

                The sensations of fear from a certain nightmare lightened upon my waking up. My right shoulder was numb, my legs were worn out, but for some reason I could not shake my wrists that were hanging above me. I turned to look above me, and I discovered that my wrists were chained to a wall.

                _How did it come to this? What I remember are the feelings of regret I had when I got angry at my friend and ran away. Yes, I could not bear to see him do something dangerous and leave me alone. I felt like I should not have said anything to hurt him, yet I was not able to meet him directly and apologize. I decided I would make up for my mistake by doing my own research on the library. I was happy when I saw him looking around for me, yet I held back the apology and decided to tell him about the library… Wait, how did I end up here?_

I turned around to see if there was anyone else in the room I was in, then I took a good look at my surroundings. The ground was concrete and dusty, so were the four walls surrounding us, one of them had a glass window, and on that same side, there was a grill door. Then, right beside me, was a boy, whose wrists were tied up against the wall, just like me. He was, however, asleep.

                _Kei? That’s you… Owhhh_

I turned to my shoulder and realized that there were two holes with the size of a pin on my shirt, and then I recalled.

                We broke into the twentieth floor of the library and found our way out, but somehow, we were discovered, and before I knew what happened to Kei, I was hit with a stun dart. I assumed the same thing happened to Kei.

                “Ughh…”

                I turned to my partner beside me when I realized he was waking up from his sleep. At least I knew he was not dead.

                “I… I can’t move my hands…” he said, shaking his locked hands around helplessly. With the little strength in my legs that I had, I tried to push myself nearer to Kei, to no avail.

                “Kei! You’re awake!” I said to him.

                “Ri?” said Kei. By this time, he had shaken off his sleepiness and began to survey the surroundings like I did when I woke up. “Oh, damn it, I remember now.”

                “Well, fifty lashes or a hundred doesn’t really matter to me, I am bound to get this again sometime later. What I find most annoying is that they lock us up here and leave us to tire ourselves up for half a day,” I said, moving back to where my hands were chained to.

                With much regret in mind, we did not utter a word for the next few minutes. Once in a while, Kei or myself would pull our locked fists and test the strength of the chain’s tension, of course, to no avail. There was no way kids like us would have enough strength to tear ourselves away from the very screws that tightly secured our hands in chains. I myself tiptoed to examine the screws that kept the chain locks in place. Though rusty, I knew that instruments like screwdrivers were not able to unscrew the locks, let alone my delicate little fingernails.

                At least five hours had passed and no one came to attend to us, but by that time we were too worn out to even stand, we had no choice but to let the chains strangle our locked hands, turning our hands purple. The last time this happened to us, the sores and swells on our hands left from the cuffs lasted a month.

                “I guess there’ll never be a way for us to escape this room, right?” said Kei, his voice in irregular rhythm. I was too tired to open my mouth, so I nodded.

                _Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

Finally, it came. The footsteps of the prison warden. I tried my best to get up again, lest I provoke his anger and give him the opportunity to inflict more unnecessary strikes on me. The gaps in between the grills of the door were wide enough for me to see the shadow of anyone passing by. I knew it was hopeless, yet for some reason, I looked at the door to see the silhouette that came.

                I looked closely at the silhouette; it was the shape of a middle-aged man. He seemed to be in security uniform, however, something was missing – it was the whip he would normally carry. When the man came closer, I noticed that the shadow of the whip that was usually there was replaced with a rectangular shaped object. With some quick flashes of recent memory, I suddenly lost hold of all the sleepiness and hunger I had.

                The warden, might have come to stun us, with his stun gun.

                “Ri!” I heard a high-pitched whisper from beside me, which I knew Kei was in the same wavelength as me. “He’s gonna stun us and take us somewhere!”

                At this point I was mentally screaming in fear, just at the simple imaginative thought of me being brought into the Counsellor’s room in the Elite Block. It became visible to us, the hands of the warden, that opened the door of the jail.

                And then, I felt the sight of the stun gun zapping me with a flash of ideas,

                “Kei! Pretend you’re half asleep! If he tries to use it on you, try deflecting with your knees!”

                We did as I told. The man had just unlocked the door. I saw from the corner of my eye his hand reaching out to his weapon. With gentle yet sneaky steps he approached Kei. I prayed and prayed with slim hopes that somehow it would be all good.

                I saw the man preparing to stab the stun gun into Kei’s chest, and I had this premonition that Kei was not able to see this. But then I realized, there was a way to ambush the warden, and I had to contribute.

                “KEI!” I screamed as loudly as I could. The man who just had his stun gun activated lost his focus on his aim as he turned to look at me. Then, he tripped and fell. Kei, with what little strength he had left, extended his legs and shoved them against the feet of the warden. As soon as he fell, we heard the “Zap” sound that faded not long after. The jackpot we thought we would never receive, happened simply in front of our eyes.

                “Looks like we managed to have the warden stun himself,” said Kei, who exchanged weary smiles with me.

                “The next challenge is harder, how’re we gonna get the key?” I said.

                “I’m nearer to him, I’ll try to use my feet and uh…” said Kei, extending his feet once more. Thankfully, the warden was on his back, easily for Kei to open his vest. “I just realized, how am I going to unlock my own locks?”

                “Try and unlock mine,” I said, with a “please” on my face. I could see that Kei was forced to use his interlocked hands as his balance, with all the pain on them, he forced his legs upwards in the air, with his middle and index toe hooking the key ring. I decided to give him a hand by extending my legs to support his.

                “You’re shaking Kei, don’t worry about dropping it. Even if it does, I can just pick it up and try the same thing on you,” I tried to calm him down, but luckily, I did not have to. Kei, in his acrobatically awkward positioning, was able to coordinate his movement in such a way that the key was aligned with the lock at my hands. All he had to do next was use his other legs to push it into the lock. With a slightly ligament-tearing move, my hands were suddenly set free.

                I fell to the ground, trying to grasp every second of rest I could get for my strained hands. As soon as I heard Kei chasing me to get up, I grabbed the key, and freed his hands. We dropped on our backs and heaved our sighs of freedom. The need to relax our outstretched arms and legs overrode our fear of being discovered. Not long after, at the Kei’s lead, I, too, got up and took a cautious look at the warden’s arms.

                We were startled at the sound of buzzing that projected from the warden’s waist. It was his walkie.

                “Quickly grab the kids and come down here, over.”

                From the brief word from the walkie, I realized that the warden was under orders to capture us in our sleep and take us somewhere.

                Wait, what? Did we hear that right? What was the reason for him sneaking up on us and knocking us unconscious? There was no need for him to worry that we would somehow set ourselves free since we were tied up. Besides, these adults were too sadistic to have us put to sleep while on our way to the disciplinary room for punishment, they would deliberately drag us along the corridors for everyone to see.

                Also, did the person on the other end of the walkie just said “come down here”? The basement was as we knew the lowest part of the school, if not the disciplinary room, then where?

                “Weren’t we supposed to receive flogging from the principal?” said Kei, whom I just realized was as bewildered as I was.

                “Exactly my thoughts,” I approved of him. There was nothing for us to say in that short pause between us. I carefully approached the still body of the warden. I gently kicked his heel just to make sure he was really unconscious. I went to his upper torso, signalled to Kei to help me turn his body around, then I removed the lanyard that was strapped around his neck. With Kei looking by my side, we examined the card in the cardholder, it contained a little coffee-bean-sized electronic chip on one of its corners.

                My mind, suddenly ignoring the current situation we were in, suddenly produced what I thought was a magnificent idea.

                “Hey, we could use this card to help us sign onto the database with administrative access!” I blurted out at a hunger-strained Kei.

                “Yeah that does sound like a good idea,” said Kei, followed by an eruption of growling from his slender belly. “But first, can we please get some food?”

                “We would then be breaching the rules again, won’t we?” my mind suddenly returned to reality. “Oh no, not good. If we stay here, we’d be unable to explain how this warden got knocked out. What would they do to us?”

                “Argh! Damn you! Since we’ve already broken some of the rules and are bound for punishment, why don’t we just get some food first!” Kei swore. My inability to decide quickly and rationally caused Kei to lose his patience. I then decided that he was right, that it was better to sooth ourselves of the scars and pains we had been having. However, there was no way we could talk our way out of the lashes, was there? And if we simply decided to refuse the punishment, would not that make us criminals?

                I had this fear that very soon, Kei and I had to make _this_ decision.

                Kei and I peeked past the door that the warden had left ajar. The lights in hallways were on and there were cameras. I thought it was better to find a way to darken the hallway before making our way out so that our movements would not be immediately detected by the camera.

                But then.

                “Come on Ri, let’s get out of here!” my partner pushed me out into the hallway before I could even explain to him my refusal to move from the door. As Kei walked off to one end of the corridor, I looked once more at the camera and thought to myself: “If we’re gonna be back in the disciplinary room to receive those lashes, there’s no point in trying to conceal our movements, is there?”

                I followed my hunger-stricken friend into the stairs to the upper floor, after which we then found ourselves in a familiar hallway. We were back in our regular school block. The wall lamps were switched off. It was at this point when we realize that the sun had not risen yet. It was still dark outside and the windows could barely display anything that was in the cold outside of the building, and the absence of students walking around made it easy for us to assume that it was still early in the morning.

                “I’m surprised we’ve made it this far without getting caught,” I said, I was not sure if my friend heard me, but we continued our way to where the canteen was. We would jog and peek at every corner that we came to, it was still better to be discreet in our moves.

                After carefully finding our way to the back door of the canteen, Kei dialled the numbers on the security panel that we discovered some time ago. The door opened.

                “Looks like they haven’t changed the password for this door,” remarked Kei. As he was putting his foot onto the ground, I suddenly had a terrible thought.

                “Wait Kei don’t move!”

                “What’s wrong?” he asked impatiently.

                “Haven’t you considered that there would be a trap in there?” I asked anxiously, I was slightly afraid that Kei would get angry at me. Kei, however, took a peek inside the room and stretched out his slender fingers onto the wall from within. After a “click” sound, the room was illuminated, with nothing strangely aligned in the room.

                “Well, they may have caught us for trespassing into the higher floors of the library, but it appears that they haven’t discovered our awareness of this door’s password,” Kei reassured.

                Kei walked in promptly, and as soon as I thought it safe to be in there, I followed him in.

                “I don’t think we can afford to carry with us much food, we’ll just rest here for now,” suggested Kei as he reached to open a drawer. I was about to scream at him when my imaginative mind conjured me an idea that there was a trap in the drawer that Kei was about to open, but Kei had it opened before I could say anything. But once again, I was wrong, there was nothing unusual about the kitchen, and there were no traps laid anywhere.

                Kei grabbed the key for one of the vending machines and walked towards the storage compartment for one of them – I reckon it was the one with sandwiches.

                _THUD_

I did not know if my mind was playing tricks on me. At one point I was worried that we were being monitored and there were traps anticipating our escape from the prison. A moment later, I was convinced that we were not detected yet. Then, when we heard the sound, we were once again challenged by that sensation of fear.

                I reached for a pipe that happened to be near me, and even Kei knew what I was thinking this time. He, too, took hold of a broom that was next to him. Combative instincts took hold of us. It was almost as if we were in one of those assault drills that the instructors gave us once a fortnight.

                “Behind the sink,” whispered Kei. I knew what he meant as both our eyes were pointed at a kitchen desk that had a sink, on the floor on the left side of it was a pan, upside down. “Take the right side, make no sound, I will move in from the left.”

                “Roger,” I merely whispered. Our combat classes occasionally had squad sparring sessions where we would team up and fight in mock battles against each other with wooden knives and guns that fired rubber pellets. Because the rest of the class would gather among themselves, we were considered the “not-so-cool” boys, we only had each other as our teammates, but I felt that the result of us becoming the target of bullies made us a team of quite some chemistry.

                As Kei began to close in on the left side of the table, he adjusted his footsteps, making his footsteps slightly more audible, I went to the other side, with as little noise as possible. Our plan was to corner the intruder (although we, too, were intruders).

                Wait, if someone was waiting for us, would they not have just put traps instead? It was much easier to subdue us with such a tactic. However, it was our safety that was at risk if we did not ascertain the source and intention of the sound.

                This time, I heard more “thud” sounds, they were softer, but they were emitted consecutively.

                “On your side!” said Kei, I could hear him loud and clear. At that point, he was at his side of the sink and he knew that someone was hiding there. I abandoned my stealth and galloped to the escape route of the intruder. I saw a figure coming out from my side, I jumped just in time to grab hold of the intruder, who struggled, and threw a few fists at me to which I dodged, in vain efforts to try and run. I raised my pipe and I was about to strike the intruder unconscious, then I noticed her.

                The intruder I knocked down was about my size, and was wearing the same uniform that other school students wore. Upon seeing the brown hair that reached her shoulders, I realized that this intruder was not just a girl, but someone I had seen before. She turned her face towards me, our eyes met, and then I realized, with much shock, that she was a student like us.

                The girl stopped struggling, and I was so shocked that I let go of the pipe in my hands.

                “What’s going on? Did you get…” said Kei as he came by, and I could tell that the fright on his face was even worse that I could bear. There was about a dozen seconds of silence, followed by Kei’s sniffling. “Oh! Its- It’s you!”

                “Ri? Kei?” the girl finally opened her mouth. “I thought you guys were in the basement?”

                “Yea,” I said. “We found a way out.”

                “What’s wrong?” the girl asked, she noticed the word “guilt” pasted on our heads.

                “Erm,” I decided to tell her that we knew what she had been going through.

                I rubbed the sweat from my eyes and cleaned my eyes with my sleeve. Kei and I exchanged nods. I had been, many times, questioning myself if what I did that day in the vent was right. I was sure at that time, but yet, it felt like I had caused someone to be harmed. I might have prevented something bad from happening, and my stubborn side prevented me from doing so.

                “Look,” I said painfully. “We saw you at the therapist’s room just about two days ago.”

                The girl sat up, and her face looked away. It was probably safe to guess that she was angry at me.

                “We were in the vent above the ceiling, from there we saw what the man was doing to you,” I paused for a while when I heard the girl sniffling, with droplets of tears dripping onto the ground, but I had to move on.

                “It’s my fault,” I insisted, but Kei had a hand on my shoulder, asserting that he was forgiving of my acts. “My friend was going to break in and save you, but I stopped him, because I was afraid that had he done so, the both of us would end up like you and his effort would be in vain.”

                By this point, the girl was too grief-stricken, she was too embarrassed to show her face to me.

                _What have I done? My convictions caused the people around me to be hurt._ I had to give in to my feelings of guilt and despair. I decided to give her space and rested myself on the side of the table. With my legs arched on the floor, I, too, covered my face with my legs. What was this life for? Were we destined to just receive hurt? And if we tried to help each other, we would end up hurting each other and ourselves? I had no more appetite, I felt that there was no food that could remove this hurt.

                “Please don’t stay away from me!” I could barely hear her say, she was still crying then. “I’m glad the both of you didn’t have to go through what I’ve been facing.” Her words allowed me to raise my head and look at her. I saw her red-eyes, probably due to consistent regular physical and mental abuse.

                “I had friends who have tried to save me,” she continued. “And I never saw them again from then on.”

                _So, Kei and I were not the only people to hate the school’s teachers?_ I realized. That, however, was not delightful enough to relieve me of my despair and guilt.

                There was another minute of silence before the girl finally reduced her sobbing and managed to get hold of herself. She stood up and looked at me.

                “Are you here to get food, too?” she asked.

                “Yeah,”

                “Then what were you planning to do after that?”

                “Oh,” I then remembered. The sun was going to rise, and this place was going to be filled with a lot of people. There was no time to sit around and dwell within our thoughts. “We were going to sneak into the library once more.”

                The girl looked at me with an enlarged eye. Kei then explained, “This time with administrative access,” I pulled out the warden’s lanyard.

                “So, that’s how you broke out,” said the girl. Understanding that this girl was definitely not on the side of those “teacher’s favourites”, I briefly shared with her what Kei and I had been doing, and our findings of the teachers of the school and the government.

                “Please let me go with you!” she begged. “I don’t want to return to my room anymore!”

                I was not sure of the consequences of her accompanying us, but I knew she had been through more than just hell, I could only agree.

                “What’s your name?” Kei said to the girl, realizing that we did not really know who she was.

                “I’m Patrice,” said she. “I know you’re Ri, and he’s Kei. I should tell you, me and some of my friends secretly support you when you stand up against those bullies.”

                “I wish those jerks would soon realize that they’re being played as puppets,” remarked Kei, I was glad to see Patrice finally smile.

                “Please let me go with you!” asked Patrice.

                I had no issues with that, I only wanted to hear Kei’s approval.

                “I’m delighted to know that we’re not the only ones who hate the school and the way the teachers and instructors work around here,” said Kei. “But Patrice, we’ve been acting delinquently according to the school’s standards. If we get into trouble, you’re going to be stuck with us.”

                “That doesn’t matter to me now!” Patrice asserted. Her face, though scarred, and her eyes, though filled with streams of crimson red capillaries, still firm as she spoke. “I don’t want to face this pain alone.”

                “Very well, then,” I concluded.

                The three of us enjoyed some good shares of the sandwiches from the vending machines. Patrice explained to us that she found out about the backdoor’s security password because she had often sneaked from behind us and observe the things we did together.

                We locked everything back where they were and left the room. The sun had just begun to make its appearance in the windows. We had at least an hour more before people started coming out onto the corridors and hallways.

                I was surprised to know that even after we found our way into the library again, our movements were still not detected yet. Maybe the teachers and the disciplinary council were confident in catching us. We entered via the vents once more and found our way into the ground floor of the library. This time, we did not need to go up to the higher floors because all we needed was a computer.

                Several tens of minutes had passed since we started using one of the computers at the main counter at the library. Our silence was a depiction of our reception of the unknown. Everything we just looked at on the screen of the computer as my hands scrolled the middle button on the mouse, were what Kei and I had always been discussing as the “unspoken history” of the school and the governing board. However, what kept our eyes stiffly locked at the screen, and our hands immobile, and our heartbeats resonating with an unnatural frequency, was not merely the achieving of our goal to discover the truth of ourselves, but the truth itself.

                There was no more concern about whether the library was going to open soon, there was _no longer_ any reason to going back to our usual school lives. Everything that we read changed our perspective of life.

                Allow me to briefly explain what happened and what we discovered:

                With Kei and Patrice watching by my side, I moved the cursor on the screen to a button on a window, in which was written: “enter database”. A pop-up appeared, stating that administrative authority was required, not long later an old-school bar-code scanner that happened to be connected to the CPU by a cable, projected a red light. Kei took out the card that we picked from the warden and held it, with the image of a series of varying breadths of black lines facing the projector on the bar-code scanner. The light turned green, from which I turned my line of sight back to the screen of the computer, which had a window with words on it: “Access granted”.

                Immediately, my eyes scanned for a search engine, and as soon as I found one, I clicked on it and typed the words “De-aging Report 002”. Because the De-aging experiment was brought back from abandonment, there was an introductory section that provided briefly the object of the experiment. What frightened us was that there was absolutely no mention of “longevity” which was said in the first report. Instead of developing de-aging methods for the sake of longevity, they had something devious, yet catastrophically dehumanising.

                “Blah blah blah, due to the desperate needs to satisfy military demands, especially the demand for quality manpower, this experiment has been set out to find a way to meet those demands in as short period of times as possible…” Kei who had been reading the words on the screen suddenly came to a halt, he had his hands cover his mouth, and his eyes were wide open.

                “Calm down Kei, we have to make sure no one finds us here!” I said to Kei, with a hand on his shoulder. I turned to the screen and read softly. “Our solution to this is by raising an army of extremely skilled soldiers, who can be trained, even without actual combat or field experience. These soldiers would be raised in military institutions from childhood, and they will consistently undergo strict disciplinary training until they are recruited as actual soldiers in their adolescence. However, due to the laws stated in Section 116, and the current political instability, imposing a drafting of children (snatching of kids from families) would not be an efficient method of obtaining enough specimens for the experiment. The only way would be to use imprisoned convicts or the children of convicts as the specimens. There would be no legal issues conflicting with this method as there are no laws protecting convicts in the statutes of the Imperial Order. Thus, the first phase of this experiment is the developing of de-aging technology. The second phase of this experiment is the “Reset” phase where we will develop methods of memory alteration, with some data picked from the failed De-aging Report 001. Our proposal is to use the intended results of these two phases on the specimen. Our convict would be de-aged into a child, and his/her memories would be rewritten.

                It felt as if the words of the following paragraph were diffusing into my nerves.

                “According to the statute (there was a footnote here indicating the section of the law which I did not bother to read), any underaged child of a convict must also be detained.”

                I remembered that time in the ground floor of the library when Kei and I were looking up news articles. We found the article of the arrest of Mr and Mrs Cook, even their son Benjamin Cook was taken away and never released.

                _So that’s how it all links together. This was the government’s way of abusing the loopholes in the law!_

                By this point I too stopped reading the words aloud. The rest of the report explained that a person learns the most and fastest during childhood, and thus with the abundance in number of convicts in the prisons of the Imperial Order, they would be able to raise a formidable army, with soldiers who had no purpose but to fight for what the Imperial Order told them to. Of course, it would be done by de-aging all of them and resetting their memories. And if needed, the governing board can at any point, and at will, use the de-aging technology to turn the students at military school back to their adult sizes, and use them as “reserve assets”.

                I pulled the cursor back onto the search engine, and I typed the words, “De-aging Report 003”. One result materialised and it was labelled, “Project Reset”, and written at the side in parenthesis were the words, “De-aging Report 003”. At this point my fingers began to twitch in hesitation for fear of what greater horrors awaited me. Kei and I were looking for a reason to be free of our obligations towards the school and the government. We were looking for a reason to stop being punchbags and slaves for the Imperial Order. But now we had explored too much and I was not sure if I was ready to see what was in it.

                “What are you doing? Just click it!”

                My heart was kind of already decided, but someone had decided for me. Kei reached out to the index finger I had on the mouse and pushed it. A new window materialised. I scrolled down from the cover page to the list of contents. The chapter that caught my eye was “Observation on specimens”.

                What appeared was a table with three columns and an uncountable number of rows. At the top of the first column was written “Specimen No.” and on the second “specimen name” and on the third “observation”. On the first succeeding line was written “K001”. On the column to the right was written the word “Kris”.

                “Oi! What’s the head prefect’s name doing here?” said Kei.

                Without stopping to answer Kei, I kept on reading in the observation column. I saw the words:

_The specimen has indicated signs of enhancement from the pre-de-aging stage._

“Woah wait, there’s a whole lot of names here!” said Kei.

                Upon seeing that Kris’s ‘serial number’ was K001, I then had an idea. I scrolled down until the ‘specimen no.’ column showed ‘K120’, I stopped to see what was written. To my horror, I saw my name written on it.

                “Hey! My name’s there too!” Kei shouted. He must definitely have seen his name above mine as his number was ‘K119’.

                I started to think back on how Kei and I got to this point. Life was just normal. We used to think it was painful but never had we once thought that we were just lab rats. Until that day when Kei met Spear, who was no sooner dragged away to who-knows-where. I was not there to see it, but I heard it all from Kei. We began our investigation, though small, every step reinforced our belief that the school was deceiving us that our sole purpose of living was to fight for the Imperial Order.

                _The specimen has indicated signs of enhancement from the pre-de-aging stage, however further psychological measures must be implemented as the specimen seems to be inquisitive of its surroundings and must be prevented from being aware of its being used as a specimen._

                That was what was written in the ‘report’ column at my name.

                We were deceived. We were not born to fight for the Imperial Order, our lives were stolen, we were manipulated into thinking that we were not lab rats while silently we were being abused of our physical, mental and spiritual capabilities.

                I stood up and went off. I could hear Patrice taking my place at the computer, I knew she must have wanted to find where her name was and find out why she was facing all the monstrosity that she had been facing. There was another period of silence among us. Though we probably knew that the library was going to be open soon, but we could not help but be plunged deep into each of our own thoughts. Fortunately, this time, I had Kei to break the silence.

                “There’s no going back to class anymore, the very moment we’re seen by the other students or teachers is the very moment we’ll get caught and be brought to the higher-ups,”

                I saw that Patrice was still dwelling within her own mental domain, so I spoke, “So, what should we do?”

                “We must fight,” Kei simply said.

                “Wait Kei, surely you don’t actually mean bursting into the principal’s door and jabbing a knife into his chest?” I reacted, I did not want to quickly approve and follow someone else’s hasty decision too hastily.

                “Ri, we’ve been living here long enough to know that no one can get past the boundaries of the school without getting caught and punished. Those who have tried have suffered worst tragedies than the both of us ever had, though, Patrice probably had it worst. If we hide, those teachers will eventually sniff out our hiding spots. Besides, we don’t even have many hiding spots to begin with, what’s even worse is that the canteen is our only source of food. One day they’re gonna find out that we broke in and stole their food. The result would still be the same – we get caught.”

                I had no objections to Kei’s answer. Yet, I was not going to easily accept the decision to start a two-man war against the entire school.

                “And you’re forgetting one thing, Ri.” Kei continued. “This wretched experiment we’re involved in is government-enforced. Even if it’s illegal, we have no say, because we’re the very lab rats of the experiment.”

                “Would there even be any point to live at all?” I spat out in dismay. “If now we decide to turn around and fight against the teachers and instructors, and let’s say we beat the shit out of them, how are we going to respond to the government’s solution to the mess we will cause? They might just say ‘the experiment’s a failure’ and then wipe us all out with the use of their actual army!”

                “Well, Ri. I do agree there’s nothing much we can do after taking over the school, but I believe that our decision to fight is more than a decision to free ourselves of our bondages, and if our fight becomes so much of a concern that the Imperial Order must step in to wipe us out, our fight would also be a cry for help. Perhaps, Ri, there’s some people out there who’re also fighting against this evil that we’re facing, and when they hear our cries, they will come to our aid, too.”

                _Who would come to rescue us? The terrorists? The Chaos Army? Well, if we do get rescued it should not be too bad._

_I won’t be sleeping on my bed again, but at least I won’t have to get yelled at by those stupid teachers, or get pushed around by that sickening Jad and his gang._

_If I die, I’ll just pass off as a failed specimen, but at least I wouldn’t have to be spanked and tied up. I also wouldn’t have to face what Patrice or who-knows-how-many kids went through. I wonder if there are even children who live lives without getting smacked every week._

“Alright, Kei. I’m with you,” I said. Kei got up and went over to me. He extended his hand forward.

                “We’ll fight,” he said.

                “Yeah.” I grabbed his hand and he pulled me up. Then I turned to see what Patrice had in mind. Unfortunately, she did not quite approve of our decision. I could tell easily that she was fearful and unsure. Whatever objection she was going to make, it was probably understandable.

                “You- you guys,” she mumbled. “You guys are going to fight?” Her question of concern was definitely a hard question. We did know that there was a possibility of us turning around to fight, but we did not know how we would do so.

                “Yeah, Patrice! Ri and I would probably equip ourselves with some weapons from the school’s Armoury, and then we’ll find our way into the principal’s office,” said Kei who came in spontaneously to fill in for my inability to respond. Kei’s answer was, however, not Patrice’s biggest concern.

                “THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT! YOU STUPID-” she shouted. I stared at her in shock, and then quickly I looked around to see if anyone had noticed us. Upon noticing that I looked around, Patrice must have realized that she shouted, so she continued softly. “The principal himself is a member of the Imperial Special Corps, and he has guards to protect him. Are you all looking for your deaths so impatiently?”

                “Patrice, the two of us are wanted, and as we explained to you earlier, we don’t know what they’re gonna do to us once they get a hold of us,” I explained. “There’s no point for us to try and go back to normal.”

                “Yeah, Ri’s right, there’s no more going back,” Kei backed me up.

                “Okay then,” said Patrice, it seemed that she had given in to our reasoning, but she had another request. “Take me with the both of you, please.” The both of us stared at her, we had no idea how to respond. Then, she begged, “Please! I swear I will not be scared of bullets anymore urgh…”

                The girl suddenly had both of her hands at her mouth which suppressed the sound of her puking as she fell on her knees. Strips of her hair from the sides covered her eyes, but I could hear her sniffle.

                “Look, it’s not that I think your problem of bullets will get in the way, but you’ve been in pain for too long,” said Kei.

                “Yeah that’s right. I can’t bear to see you get hurt anymore,” I chipped in. I realized at this point that there was nothing wrong with having Patrice fight alongside us, but I was scared of the possibility of seeing her getting tortured again if we ever lost.

                Suddenly, after a ferocious punch in the face, I flew into one of the library counters nearby.

                “Patrice! Why did you hit him?” I could hear Kei castigating Patrice.

                “It’s not fair! IT’S NOT FAIR!” I heard Patrice shout angrily. “I can’t allow myself to sit back and watch the both of you die for our sufferings. I can’t allow myself to be useless again!”

                Patrice rubbed her left eye, revealing a deep-red curved line that was carved from a few centimetres from the top of her eyebrow to a few centimetres to the bottom of her eyelash. This was a scar we had not noticed until that moment. At that moment there was nothing we knew that could cure her of her fear of bullets. Nevertheless, she dreamed that one day she would be able to stand up against those who hurt her, with or without overcoming her fears. That scar on her eye was probably one of the things that she would never try to forget.

“Please don’t do this on your own, you’ve got all of us! You’ve got Risha, Coleen, Andy, and me!” she reminded us of her friends who also secretly disliked the teachers and instructors.

                “Patrice, you must return to them,” said Kei. “If we die, we have the rest of you to continue fighting for us.”

                I was not sure if letting Patrice and her friends fight with us was right, and if rejecting her request was good for us. I thought at that time that she had endured enough, and it was for Kei and I to fight also for those who were hurt.

                “Alright,” said Patrice. She finally gave in and respected our decision fight without her. “But please, take care of yourselves.”

                Those tears that fell suddenly proposed a question for me in my mind: Was I truly prepared to fight?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for waiting, I hope to be able to post the last few chapters in the next few months.  
> Do look forward to the next chapters as they are where the fight scenes begin truly begin.


	7. Confrontation I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kei and Ri have decided, what hard battles await them as they fight to take over the school?

In Kei’s eyes

                I removed the cover of the trapdoor in the vent, and after a brief look-around, I dived in. Ri followed suit. After locating a nearby light switch, I toggled it, illuminating the darkness. Thankfully, there were no windows in the Armoury. Located at the entrance of the school’s Administrative Block, which was where the offices for the teachers and instructors were, we were surprised to find an endless hallway displaying 21st century weaponry.

                “Let’s take a break here,” said Ri, the both of us were tired after sneaking Patrice back to her room and finding our way there without getting seen. Being stealthy is hard.

                The Armoury was split into several hallways, each with weapons lined up on walls on both sides. We entered the hallway where knives were lined up on both walls. I walked in and picked up the first one on the left.

                “This is shaped just like the ones we use in the exams and sparring sessions,” I commented, examining every part of the knife. The handle was slightly longer than the breadth of my palm. The handle was protected by a cuboid-shaped cross-guard, about 15 cm long, and as broad as the diameter of the handle, which was about two centimetres. The bottom of the hilt was supported by a pommel. The breadth of the blade’s forte was about five centimetres, and its length in its entirety was of about half a metre. The ones we used in sparring sessions and examinations were all made of wood, but this that I held in my hand was almost fully metallic, with exception to the handle that was layered with rubber to maintain a firm grip for the user.

                “This takes me back to those times…” I lingered momentarily into the hallway of memories.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                The CQC instructors had three hours of training sessions four times a week. Half of it was when the entire class would gather at the centre of the gym and follow what the instructor would teach, and the other half was all sparring. The instructors would make us fight each other in duels where the first to get struck on the chest with a knife or have a knife at the face or neck would be the loser. Things usually got rough as there would be a frequent exchange of fists and kicks on each other. It was the time everyone got to apply everything they learnt, whether it was unarmed martial arts, or swordplay, which had the French, and Japanese variants. Of course, we do not die from these fights as we were usually equipped with turtleneck flak jackets and knee guards, so minor injuries were easily sustained, but the instructors did not usually interfere in the duels just because someone was bleeding badly. They believed that this would bring fear upon students, forcing them to actually fight so that they would not get injured.

                It was one of those sparring sessions, and my partner was Ri. Of course, I was not going to go easy on him just because we were good friends.

                We stood facing each other with our _en garde_ positions. As soon as the umpire overlooking us gave the signal, Ri came in on me, with his wooden knife thrusting into my direction.

                “Heheh!” I smirked. Being able to come up with a perfect response within a split second was the result of my past few years of practice. With the edges of my blade pointing at 11 o’clock and five o’clock respectively, I had my hand strafed to the left, right on time for it to clash with Ri’s. I was able to divert the direction of his attack, leaving me unscathed. Not willing to be lenient, I maintained the extension of my left-arm, and with my guard acting as a shield against the blade of his knife, I leaped forward. Apparently, the force on my arm was too strong, the lunge had Ri knocked onto the ground.

                “Halt!” I heard the instructor shout, and then with his hands waving about horizontally, he continued, “Point on my left!”

                I pulled Ri up and we left the bout for a two-minute break.

                “Man! That was amazing! I was pretty sure I put all my strength into that attack, and you managed to block it!” Ri praised.

                “Come on,” I said, trying to wipe off the game-mode I put on every spar. “You did great too, that lunge was powerful and it might’ve worked on almost anyone else. You should, next time, maintain a better body posture, though, if you did it might’ve helped you recover faster.”

                “Okay! I got it man!” Ri approved while wiping off the sweat on his face. It was not very long before the next match for one of us was about to begin.

                “Next round!” shouted one of the umpires. “ID K119 versus K001!”

                “Woah, isn’t that our head prefect?” Ri exclaimed realizing that I was about to spar with our batch’s top student.

                “My, isn’t this an extraordinary opportunity?” I remarked. Although Kris, the head prefect, was to be fair a mysterious person to the both of us, we always took her as an enemy, siding with those stupid kids and unrighteous prefects who abused us with the power the ruthless teachers granted them. Aside from wanting to seek out Kris’s combative strength, I also wanted the chance to beat her up.

                “Show her what you got, Kei!” Ri cheered me on.

                I entered the bout, and in front of me was the girl. It was hard to tell what kind of expression was on her face, it even seemed like she was expressionless.

                _What kind of strength does she have that allows her to be the strongest of us all?_

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                “Kei! Stop dreaming!”

                “Oh shit, I’m sorry Ri,” realizing that I had almost forgotten what I was there for.

                _Still, I don’t think the teachers would send their favourite student into the frontlines, even if it were just a few delinquent students bound for corporal punishment, right?_

                Ri and I, quickly and without thinking, picked our respective weapons and then we headed out of the armoury and proceeded into the elevator that would lead us to the principal’s room. The both of us were equipped with turtleneck flak jackets, school shorts, flak knee-guards, shoulder guards on both sides and sidearms of Beretta. Ri however, picked a sniper rifle, which he slung over his shoulder. On the other hand, I had an AK on my back. The both of us each had a wireless walkie- connected to an earphone in our ears and a microphone on the helmets we picked. We strapped to our belts a few grenades and thrown equipment as well.

                “Once we leave this room, we enter the battlefield,” I reminded Ri.

                “Of course,” he replied.

                Leading the way, I went first to the door of the Armoury. I extended my arm, pushing the door ajar. I peeped at both sides, from the gap between the hinges and the door on the left, and then on the right. I put a thumbs up behind me to tell Ri that the corridor was clear. Immediately, I exited the room and Ri followed suit. Silently and without noise, we found our way to the main elevator of the block. The Administrative Block was a long building five storeys high. The first three floors were the staffrooms where most of the teachers and instructors had their offices. The fourth and fifth floor was said to be where the school’s board had their office. Naturally, we would assume that the principal’s room was at the highest.

                By some strange luck, we entered the elevator without being caught. I pressed the button labelled “five”, resulting in the closing of the doors. We could tell that the room was being lifted as we felt ourselves heavier.

                Of course, killing the principal was not going to be easy, much less taking over the school.

                A loud “RATARATARATARATA” nearly punctured our eardrums.

                Before we realized something was hindering the elevator’s operation, the elevator doors in front of us projected scattered flashes of sparks. Ri and I got down for cover. Then we saw what was happening – the door was being fired at by some sort of rapid-fire machine gun. The bullets that drilled the doors became so many that they began to pierce through the door and ricochet off the walls within the elevator. Ri and I, acting on strict survival instincts, jumped up and held onto the handle of the emergency trapdoor on the ceiling of the elevator. By this point, we understood that we had to get to the top floor by another way.

                The mob of bullets that burst through the door looked like 5 mm rounds. The holes in door were big enough for these bullets to pass through, but not big enough for us to break through. Ri noticed this and found our escape route from the elevator.

                “BANG!” Ri, whose body was still hanging onto the trapdoor, flicked out his Beretta, abruptly aimed it at the “open” button on the elevator panel and fired at it, producing a spark and loss of electricity flow within the circuits of the elevator. The doors opened.

                “A minigun’s capacity is 500 rounds, we’re gonna be trapped here if we don’t move out!” said Ri through the walkie.

                “Ri! I’m gonna flash the door!” I responded, taking out a flashbang from my belt and bit the pin with my teeth. “This will affect the enemy’s accuracy for a short while, then we move out!”

                As soon as Ri nodded in agreement, I pulled the can out, with the pin locked between my teeth, I dropped the flashbang into the parade of bullets while looking up and making sure we did not get blinded by the flash.

                “KA SHNGG!” A light so bright that it reflected off the dull walls of the elevator partially blinded my eyesight, the loud burst rendered my ears numb and ringing for a bit, but when we saw the spray of the minigun bullets getting disoriented, we knew the plan worked. It seemed that the flash temporarily blinded the enemy’s sight and caused them to lose accuracy. Nothing was needed to be said, Ri and I immediately got back down and ran out through the door of the elevator. However, the spray of bullets returned and the both of us were to forced to find cover as soon as we left the elevator, leaving us with only a split-second to gaze at the place we were in. That entire floor was a staffroom, about 30 metres from the walls on the left to the right, and the entire hall was about five metres high. There were desks everywhere, and I believe the tables we sought cover at belonged to some other teachers as well. The desks provided cover from one side and space to hide in, presumably from the side where a person would sit at. Unfortunately, there was no time to look around. The enemy’s minigun continued to spray its ammunition into the desks we had our back against and the walls behind them.

                “Keep down, Kei!” Ri reminded me through his walkie.

                “Got it!” I replied. The only way to respond to the attack was to wait for the ammunition to run out and strike when the enemy was reloading. To our relief, the firing did stop which we confirmed after hearing a “Clack” from the far end of the hall. The result of the machine gun’s spray was fiery, I was able to smell the ash from which the leftover paperwork from the desks were burnt into. Some of the tables were reduced to rubbles, it was a good thing the tables the covered us were at the most back.

                “The two of you little shits never learn.”

                I heard a voice in the midst of silence and sudden lack of gunfire. This voice was insidiously familiar. Ri and I raised our heads cautiously above our tables to see who our enemy was. The dust in the air cleared and all the papers that were sent flying finally settled. Right at the other end of the hall was a person. This enemy of ours did not start reloading the minigun, but was apparently preparing to say something more.

                “THE BOTH OF YOU SHOULD LEARN WHERE YOUR PLACE IS!”

                The person had a harsh, deep feminine voice, long hair, and was in full imperial instructor’s uniform. Painted on the face was the desire to keep hurting, and hurting, and not stopping because for that person, seeing someone get hurt was fun. It could not be anyone else, the one who stood in our way was Madam Genie.

                “Ri, we’re here to take over the school, but I’m prepared to kill. Are you?” I asked.

                “Same here, but only if we must.”

                “All good, then LETS…”

                “Wait, Kei!”

                I stuck my head out recklessly in preparation to charge. What I failed to notice was that Madam Genie abandoned her minigun and pulled out another automatic. Once again, she started firing and I dropped back onto the floor. Had I not registered Ri’s warning, I might not have escaped with just a graze.

                “KA CHACK”

                I swore I could have heard a noise from among all the shooting and it sounded like that time when I pulled out the pin of my flashbang before tossing it onto the ground. Ri and I continued to lay our backs against our respective desks. There were bullets firing at both our directions which meant that Madam Genie was firing two machine guns at the same time. There was no way one of us could cover the other, we would have to wait until she runs out of bullets again.

                _But would this woman let us hide that easily?_

“TING” “TING”

                I heard something deflected off one of the desks at the front and it seemed to bounce towards the spot separating Ri and I. At once my panic kicked in and I realized what it was.

                “GRENADE!” I shouted as I left cover and ran to the left. Ri who was on the right, seemed to have gone the other way as soon as he heard my shout.

                _BOOM_

                “AAARRRGGGHHHH…”

                I ignored Genies machine gun firing and leaped for my life. There was an explosion that engulfed where Ri and I were hiding. We were apparently just steps away from its lethal zone. The sound of the explosion was so loud and painful it had me burying my head into the ground with my hands covering my ears. I was in such shock that I could only crawl my way to another desk, for fear of Madam Genie’s machine guns.

                “Kei! Can you hear me! Kei!” I heard a voice from my earphone, at least I knew the ringing in my ears was only temporary.

                “Ri! You’re alright!” I responded.

                “Glad that you are too!” said Ri. “Listen, I got a plan!”

                “Great! Any plan would do,” I replied, slightly distracted by Madam Genie who suddenly started cackling.

                “The bullets of her guns were so powerful they shattered every other desk in the room, the ones we’re using now are the only ones remaining. We need to attack from both sides, but one of us has to push first and distract her!”

                “What do you say?” I insisted.

                “I’ll put out a smokescreen, when we’re temporarily blocked from her sight, you charge towards her from your side. There are a few pillars on her sides, you should use them as cover, you don’t have to close in, just try to distract her and I will sneak in from my side of the hall.”

                “Brilliant! Simple and easy!” I replied, at the same time I was trying to soothe my anxiety. Never was I so scared of getting killed, yet this was not supposed to be as painful as those punishments the school board used on us.

                “Be careful! Madam Genie has an extra handgun and a grenade!” warned Ri.

                Ri’s definitely a reliable partner. There was me, a brute that swung his knife and ran around while there was Ri who, though a little less athletic and robust, had not just superb eyesight and bull’s eye precision shooting, but also the ability to devise plans. The plan was for me to advance first but that was okay because I could count on Ri to make it there unnoticed.

                “Proceed as planned the moment I let out the smoke,” said Ri on the earphone.

                _There is nothing that can break our resolve now!_

                A smoke can rolled along the hall providing a smokescreen for the both of us. Madam Genie stopped firing; it was clear she did not know how to sneak us out hence she could only wait for one of us to move out. I got up from my cover, pulled up my assault rifle and held it at shoulder level. I dashed out of the smoke. I looked at the front where Madam Genie was. Her eyes and my eyes met. Immediately, she disgustfully had both of her guns pointed towards me and she continued firing. I could hear the bullets of her guns smashing up the wall along which I ran. Although her shooting was reckless, her line of bullets closed well on me even though I ran my fastest. I drew my gun up at sprayed a couple bullets, coercing her to take cover.

                Madam Genie and I continued to exchange shots even after I reached the end of the hall on my side. This was Zugzwang for the both of us, I would lose my cover if I advanced further towards Madam Genie, however if Madam Genie were to pull out a grenade Ri would signal me. However, this one on one situation is a disadvantage for me as I am the one with lesser ammunition.

                _That’s why I’m counting on you, Ri!_

“KAPOW” I heard Ri’s piercing snipe. I knew it landed a hit on Madam Genie when I saw blood splatter from her left shoulder, at this point I thought I would have screamed a “Yes!”. I heard Madam Genie grunt before hearing a few more of Ri’s shots, since there was no ricocheting, I thought they hit her.

                “WHY YOU!” shouted Madam Genie with much aggravation. I was going to snatch this opportunity and fire upon her when I noticed something that she was doing. I saw her turn around, reach for the grenade on her belt and unpinned it. Should I have fired on her as she was doing so? Regardless, what she did had me distracted and instead of taking the chance, I momentarily gave into panic.

                “Ri! She’s got a grenade!”

                _BOOM_

                Once again, my ear canals were stormed with the sound of the explosion. This time, however, I refused to succumb to the sounds that almost shook my nerves. I slung back my rifle, drew out my knife and I charged towards her. Trusting that Ri managed to dodge the grenade’s explosion, I made my way into the woman, who seemed to somehow withstand the shot that Ri landed on her.

                _Just what does this woman believe in? Why does she stop at nothing when it comes to hating us?_

                I ran as hard as I could and closed the distance between the enemy and I. By the time Madam Genie was able to turn around and see what I was up to, there was only two metres separating her and my blade. However, as much as I had faced many of her punishments, Madam Genie’s brutality was yet beyond anything I could ever visualize. Madam Genie pulled back her gun towards me.

                _What does this woman think she’s doing? She can’t hit me with it in such a short amount of time._

                I was so wrong. That mishap taught me a hard lesson on underestimating Madam Genie’s skills as a military instructor. I took one last leap at her, with my knife ready to jab her from above. What happened next was a mockery of myself. Madam Genie did not fire the gun at me, she swung it at me. The barrel of her M249 smacked hard into my right cheek before my knife could even reach her and immediately, I then conceded to gravity. I had my back on the ground, yet I was unwilling to let such pain put a pause to my fight. I pushed myself back up with my right hand, soon I was back on my feet. I was not going to give Madam Genie any time to aim her gun at me. She raised the gun on her left hand up at me and used it to parry my lunge. With my guard locking her gun in place I refused to let go, for if I did, I would give her space to attack, either by shooting or knocking me down with it.

                _Did I overlook something? OH NO!_

With both our weapons still locked and engaged, Madam Genie had her left-hand reach to the holster at her waist while her right hand was still holding on to the ground. This was not good, I had nothing to block what she would do next as I was open for her to shoot with her sidearm, but I had really good faith in my friend who was probably still alive on the other flank.

                “BANG” I heard a bullet cut through the air and nailed a hole in the handgun Madam Genie was about to pull out.

                “Argh! Damn you, you shit!” the instructor swore in pain. Then, I realized what happened. Ri fired at her hand, causing her to drop the handgun she was about to use on finishing me off.

                _I won’t let you off now!_

“HAAAAAAAAA…” I disengaged my knife from the clash with her gun by pulling it under, then I proceeded to throw a kick at the arm holding onto the machine gun. Madam Genie, who had spent most of her strength forcing her gun against my blade when I suddenly decided to let go, fell forward at my direction. She was all open with no possible counter moves. I was not going to let this slide past. I had my entire body do a 180-degree turn-around after executing the kick on her main arm, recovering my offensive stance while Madam Genie was still trying to regain her posture. I raised my knife again and made a horizontal slash at the instructor’s waist. Madam Genie fell onto floor, a pool of blood enlarging and drenching her clothes.

                Frankly, I was stunned. A flak jacket was supposed to be capable of withstanding a direct attack of any light weighted hand weapon. I then realized how Ri and I were so convicted of our reason to rebel against the school’s authorities that no physical material would shatter our desire to fight. I knew Madam Genie was not dead, but it felt like she was not able to get up anymore. I took a closer look at her, I then realized that Ri’s shots earlier landed a few hits on her legs.

                “It seems she had less ammunition than we had presumed,” I heard Ri comment as he approached me from behind. My eyes fixed on the helpless adult. I could not believe that the two of us, albeit being kids, were able to beat this woman whom we have been hoping to. “Let’s go, Kei.”

                Just a moment ago, we were so ready to take a life, now our enemy was lying defeated on the ground. After considering that she was out of ammunition and her handgun was broken, I decided that it was time we moved on and leave her.

                “Is there a staircase at the end there?” I asked, turning away from the woman.

                “Yeah, there should be,” said Ri.

                The pathetic, sore loser who treated us like toys and slaves prior to this unfortunately was not going to let us move on without putting a sore on us.

                “You… you…” I heard the woman on the ground groan. “You stupid little boys!”

                _What? Does she have another gun up her sleeve?_

“Those upstairs are gonna get you, and I will die an honourable death!”

                A sensation of burning anger suddenly materialised within me, almost everything I did next was out of my control.

                “UURRGHH!” I groaned in anger. I turned around and galloped my way back to her. Upon nearing her, I had my left foot swung into her bruised face, and a loud “smack” sent her head back into the ground she was on. “YOU WANNA DIE AN HONOURABLE DEATH? I’LL CUT YOUR HEART OUT AND SHOW YOU WHAT IT IS!” I wailed as I snatched out my knife again and raised it in the air in preparation for jabbing it into Madam Genie’s chest.

                “STOP IT!” I heard Ri shout from behind, then he had his hand on mine, preventing me from moving the knife. It was just like that time in the vent when I was about to open the trapdoor to save Patrice. The woman’s words were provocative and I was about to give in to that, but then I remembered what Ri and I agreed on. We would only kill if we had to.  I struggled a bit, then let go. I stood back up, threw another kick at the teacher’s ear, then walked off.

                I would have loved to see that disgusting woman die a painful death, but I respected Ri’s hate for killing. Do not get me wrong, Ri was always determined in everything he did, but killing was something he would avoid, it did not matter if it was killing a friend or foe. More importantly, Madam Genie was down and combatively disabled, there was nothing she could do to stop us from moving forward.

                But again, Madam Genie said something strange that I was not able to let go of.

                “My.. My son… Ughh… Give him back…” I heard Madam Genie vaguely say out. Before I wanted to turn back and find out what she said, Ri pulled me back on track.

                “Let’s move on to the next, Kei,” said Ri, trying to help me rid myself of my thoughts.

                “Yeah, you’re right.” I replied. I still could not help but wonder what she meant. Madam Genie had always and still struck me as an evil and unforgivable psychopath, but the words she just said, though at that time I would not admit it, made me see her as a different person for a while. It made me wonder what kind of things she faced to become the monster Ri and I hated.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                The two of us pushed open the doors that awaited us after climbing up to the fourth floor. The staircase leading to the fifth floor was back on the other end, so we had to get through whatever was in that floor.

                _The school board’s office is here? Will there be more teachers? Or will we face off against someone higher like Mr Ordna or one of the other instructors?_

                Both doors slammed open, revealing another huge hall filled with vacated desks and seats, this hall was about the same width as the previous but slightly shorter in height. Obviously the executives of the school might have been asked to leave to avoid getting on the receiving end of unnecessary damage. Standing in front of us, at the other end of the hall, were five people. I had expected these people to be brawny man or women with bulky guns and machetes, but these people were not even adults!

                _What the?_

                The five of them were about our heights, they were in military exam outfits like us, some of them had different weapons from the rest. All but one of them stood proudly with their guns in their hands, but not aiming at us. I was able to see that most the guns that each of them used was either some sort of assault rifle or submachine gun, but I could not figure out the weapon used by their leader. I wonder if they were waiting for us to arrive. Since they were all in helmets, it was hard to tell who they were by their faces, however, I heard this one voice from their leader and I felt like puking.

                “Ho-ho! The bully who’s not happy with his punishment has finally arrived!” I recognized that voice, it belonged to Carl. I was told that Carl and his friends Xi and Jin were chosen as prefects. They were biased in their supposed duties as “prefects” and whenever the real bully, like Jad, would do something hurtful to another student, these so-called “prefects” would shamelessly join in. Ri and I have always been the targets of their exploitations, and now they were standing right in front of us. What was more sickening, however, was the fact that the school authorities made these kids fight us instead of calling on the security board or other adults.

                “You bloody hypocrites! I’ll show you…” Ri had a hand on my shoulder, he apparently knew that I was going to open fire blindly. “What? These kids won’t be listening to negotiations anytime soon!”

                “At least let me try,” said Ri. Then he turned to the five prefects and shouted. “You say that we’re useless, that we’re bullies.”

                “Shut your damned mouth, loser!” shouted one of the prefects.

                “If you say so, why are you stopping us? We are going to the principal for punishment…”

                “Don’t be a dumbass!”

                I was able to see at this point that Ri was not trying to negotiate, he was just trying to feed them some good roasting before we started fighting.

                “Did you get chosen as prefects because the teachers love you? Then, why did they send you out here to die?” Ri spat out one last humbling statement.

                “HOW DARE YOU!” the leader of this squad of prefects was obviously angered. These people still had no idea that they were being misused for evil. “Engage in Alpha-One formation!”

                _Alpha-One? We were taught quite a few basic formations in school where one would cover a few others, but this I’ve never heard before._

I saw four of them moving as they started firing on us. Their shots were not threatening yet as there was still good distance between us and them. I was not sure about the fifth, the leader, who stayed behind, but I was sure he was not going to stay behind and let his own cronies do the dirty work. Like we did in the previous fight, we took cover behind some desks.

                “Ri!” I spoke through my microphone. “If we fire on them now, we’ll stop them from pushing!”

                “No, wait!” Ri replied, I did not rush out this time. “Something’s not right!”

                “What’s up?” I asked.

                “They’re charging up at us without getting any cover, which means someone or something’s got them covered. We need to split up first!” said Ri.

                I headed off to the left while Ri went off to the right. The prefects’ bullets changed direction, indicating that they knew of our movements.

                “Their leader must be watching us,” Ri whispered.

                _PLOP_

                I heard a sound from among the student squad. It sounded like a low-density projectile was fired at our direction. But the moment I heard it deflect off on of the nearby desks, I knew what it was.

                “Ri! Watch out!” I blasted into my microphone so Ri would comprehend the distress. I dashed my way into and under another desk on the left before succumbing to another deafening explosion from some near where Ri and I initially took cover at. Unable to hear for a short while, I could not help but accidentally get myself caught up in some of their crossfires. Chunks of wood from the explosion flew into my back and luckily, I did not get hit, save a few grazes from their bullets.

                “Man! I’m never gonna get used to these explosions!” I swore into my microphone while hiding behind another desk that was guarding from gunfire of varied accuracies.

                “Kei! Can you hear me?” I heard a voice at my earphone and knew I was getting my hearing back.

                “Yes Ri! What is it?” I responded.

                “I take it that they’re not shooting grenades now because their leader hasn’t found our new locations, but at this rate we can’t stop the four prefects from closing in on us because once we get up and fire on them, they’ll know where we are,” explained Ri. “I’ve got a few more smoke bombs on me, I will smoke this entire place first, then hide away somewhere and attempt to take out their leader, you will engage with the other four.”

                “Woah! A one-v-four for me?” I exclaimed. “Then again, there’s probably no better way to split it up. Close-quarters combat is my thing, so leave it to me!”

                “Okay, then. Here we go!” said Ri.

                I heard Ri unplug a few canisters before tossing them around the hall. As soon as we judged that we were invisible, Ri and I set off to our respective checkpoints. I did consider the possibility that the leader of the prefect squad had a thermal sensor on his gun. We learnt in the textbooks that the actual Imperial Special Ops would have thermal sensors attached to their scopes to assist in locating enemies who were hiding in cover, but as far as I knew, even the Elite Block students were trained to fight without the use of such savvy tech, and we did not see any in the Armoury, hence I supposed that these guys would not have any.

                Thankfully, I was right on that, but getting through them was much harder than we thought. I made my way through the smoke, one hand at my nose, the other ready at my sheath. I trotted from desk to desk, ready to knock down any opponent that immediately appeared. Although I was able to make a few moves without being seen, I was detected much sooner than I expected.

                _SSZZZZZZZ_

                A single projectile flew past me, discreet and solitary, it must have been an AK from my one o’clock judging from the light made from the shooting. I recklessly gave in to instincts and hid myself back under the desk I was about to move out from. Then suddenly, I heard a series of consecutive shots fired right at me, from a direction I had no cover from. Judging by the automated pattern of its firing, I figured it must have been a submachine gun.

                _There’s some behind me? How did they figure me out? Well, if it’s come to this then I have an idea._

                I picked up some books and pens that were left on the desk I was hiding under, then I tossed them, some to my right, some to my left. This time I heard even more shooting, but with what I did, I was able to pinpoint the location of my pursuers. Judging from the shooting, there were two behind me, and two in front. After a split second, the two behind me seemed to stop shooting. I believed they had some communication and were made to stop firing to avoid friendly fire. Firing from my eleven and one o’clock appeared to be respectively a submachine gun user and the AK user I heard earlier. My plan was to head to one of them and knock him out and use him as a human shield. However, there was a question of whether I could do it unscathed. It would take approximately 20 hits of a submachine gun to my vest to have me wounded while just one or two from an AK would do. Another problem was that dodging 20 hits of a submachine gun was more challenging due to its low recoil. Upon quickly concluding that the AK would less likely get a hit on me, I decided to head for the prefect at my one o’clock. I felt that the prefect with the submachine gun might still fire but since I was not running towards him, it was more likely that he would miss.

                I slung back my rifle, readied my knife, then I set out to my one o’clock. As expected, I was fired at from both directions, but the prefect with the submachine gun stopped after a few seconds. It appeared that I was nearing the prefect with the assault rifle. I made sure that as I ran, I strafed from left to right in irregular patterns. As I was about 10 metres away from the source of shooting, I picked up a chair and held it in front of me as I ran. The bullets of the AK-47 would either graze past my legs or find themselves in the chair that I was holding out. Five metres away from the prefect, I threw the chair forward and I ran even harder. I saw the prefect blocking the motion of the chair with his gun. This was my chance, I then jumped forward.

                “HAAAAAAAAARGGHHHH!!!!” I screamed as I leaped into the air, raising my knife up in preparation for my attack.

                But I knew that defeating even just one of them was not going to be merely a battle of tactics. This school that I was in was an excruciatingly competitive school where an environment of desiring to outclass one another other was established. There was no way the prefect who accidentally left an opening for me to attack was going to let me beat him just like that. Immediately he abandoned the rifle by tossing it aside. Even if he believed that he could hit me again by firing, there would not be many rounds left in its current magazine, and its high recoil makes it harder for any shot of it to get me. But despite having such a significant change in stance and fighting methods, this person managed to bring out the best counter-move to my attack. He swiftly unsheathed his knife and executed a parry, then he raised one of his feet against my chest. I was knocked back and I barely managed to regain my balance.

                “Damn you, Xi!” I cursed upon recognizing the face within my opponent’s visor. “I’ll get all of you soon!”

                I did not bother to hear his response as my attention turned to my surroundings. I saw that the other three prefects who initially had me surrounded closed in on me. They, too, unequipped their guns and had knives in their hands. It looked like they realized they could not all fight me with guns.

_I see, so now they’re fighting me this way._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for waiting, at last we see Kei and Ri in combative action as they fight against the school's authorities.  
> There will be more action in the next chapter, hope you're looking forward to it!


	8. Confrontation II - What Do You Fight For

** In a certain Prefect’s perspective **

                _What have I been doing?_

What was this place even? Was it our home? The teachers here are monsters, many of the students are just filthy bullies, even the prefects- whom I was made to partner with! How did I even end up fighting here in this hall? Oh, right. I was fighting those delinquents who broke out from prison and made their way into the Administrative Block. I used to think that those two were filthy bullies. It seemed to me at first that they were always looking for opportunities to beat up the weak. But then, I began to have different opinions of these people.

                When I was first given the chance to join the Prefectorial Board, I thought I could protect my friends from mistreatment and ease them of some of their burden, but I ended up hurting them even more. I started off obeying blindly the orders given by the teachers and senior prefects, but instead of helping me gain their trust which I had hoped to, it made me realize I was a puppet.

                Then, why was I trying to hate Kei and Ri? I used to believe what the prefects and teachers say about them- that they were just troublemakers and were evil, enemies of justice. But then, I realized that I, like the both of them, was just looking for a group of friends to belong to, to find comfort in, and to find protection. I was always angry at them, conjuring hateful thoughts every time I saw them, not because they hurt me, but because I was jealous of them. The past few weeks of my observing of them helped me to realize that these boys did no wrong, and we the bullies were the ones hurting students like them.

                _CLANK! THUD!_

There we were, the five of us. Four of us pushed on to close in on one of the rebels who broke into the Administrative Block, our leader Carl stayed back. It turned out that getting rid of the rebel was not going to be easy, he even outdid our battle strategy. Thanks to a few smoke bombs from his partner, we were forced to close in on him and he forced us to use our knives when he engaged with Xi. I saw Kei and Xi clash blades. Kei must have noticed Jin charging in at him, hence he shot a kick at Xi, pushing him on to the ground and buying whatever critical seconds he needed to reposition his knife and parry Jin’s slash. As far as I was able to comprehend the situation, Jin knew that Sammy and I would come from behind and back her up, hence she attempted to place Kei in a more disadvantageous ground by suddenly thrusting her hand forward and grabbed Kei by the neck.

                “HYAAAAAAARGHH!” I could hear Jin’s shout in full adrenaline.

There was no time to strangle him as Kei would disengage his knife and try to force her back, so Jin, with the help of a pivot foot and the strength of her entire body, made a 180 degree spin and had Kei tossed into mid-air. Still trying to show my prefect partners that I was still trying to suck up to them, I rushed in alongside and began to thrust my knife forward into the direction of Kei’s airbourne body. I had already witnessed Kei put up a good fight, but I was not expecting more.

“Aargh!” I heard Sammy cry out in pain. It appeared that not only did our attacks missed, Kei who was in mid-air was even able to plant a kick in Sammy’s face and he had a knife at mine. Both of these happened at the same time. Sammy fell on his back, the recoil from the blade-clash caused me to back down. I then took a closer look at Kei. Although our attacks did not have a direct hit on him, we were still able to plant a few wounds on his right leg and left shoulder. I saw him land on the ground, blood flowing slowly onto the ground. But not long later, Kei was back on his feet, knife ready in his left hand again.

_For what reason, truly, do you get up and keep fighting? Kei!_

But even without crying my thoughts out loud, this person seemed to know what I was thinking.

 

* * *

 

In Ri’s eyes

                I was able to hear some shootings and blade-clashing from afar but they were soon forgotten as I made my way further to the front. My role in this was to draw the leader’s attention away from his comrades and Kei as soon as the smoke was cleared. I thought I gave Kei a hard time for dealing with four of them but now that I knew they were engaging in close-quarters combat, their fight would be one that I wanted to fight the least.

                All I had to do was wait at one of the front-most desks and when the smoke was beginning to clear, then gun down the leader with my Beretta. I had my suppressor attached to my gun, then I with the desk as cover, and I aimed at the front. When the smoke cleared, a long table was revealed, it was the table the five prefects stood behind at the start, but this time there was no one there, not even their leader.

                A beam of light suddenly reflected off the glass on my visor.

                “Oh shit!” I thought.

                I was barely able to turn my head when a projectile appeared to laser its way into my direction. I did not even have the chance to move an inch, and within the next split-second, I could feel the thunderous drill of a bullet as it shattered my supposedly “bulletproof” helmet into pieces and my polymer-reinforced visor into shards of glass notwithstanding that it was not a direct hit on my helmet. About a second after that, when I was finally in progress of quickly throwing myself back into whatever cover there was, a second projectile blazed through my hair from behind. Luckily, those shots only brought grazes. I wiped off the remaining fragments of the helmet on my head. I turned around and with my body behind the desk, I held my silencer out aiming at the back trying to spot the leader of the prefects. With a split-second light of warning and scattering of desk papers, two consecutive shots were discharged at my desk. One of them punctured a hole in the table, the other barely slashed past my main arm, forcing me to put down my gun. I learnt that Carl was using a semi-auto sniper rifle, possibly the standard Dragonov used during exams.

                _Dumbass! Did you really think you can take on the second-ranked student with just a Beretta?_

                I decided to put aside my pistol and take out my sniper rifle. I pulled out its legs and positioned it on top of the desk. The assistant head prefect who opened fire continued to shoot and shoot and drilled holes into the desk I was hiding behind. One problem was that I had limited ammunition and if I was unable to take him down with whatever rounds I had, I would then no longer be able to advance and pin him down.

                For the next few minutes, Carl and I exchanged shots. The both of us were about a hundred metres apart, which was about twice the shooting distance of the shooting range. Carl and I often switched positions to avoid getting our guns hit.

                _ZZZZZSSSSSHHHHH!_

                My nerves were pricked when a bullet from Carl’s rifle flew into one of the legs supporting my rifle, shattering it and causing my rifle to lose balance.

                _If this goes on, I will run out of ammo!_

_Wait a second, does Carl actually have a stock of ammunition with him?_

I wanted a good look at where Carl was but the rifle was too heavy to simply have it lifted about. I unlocked the sight and held it right above the table. The scope was small so Carl probably did not notice that I was looking at him. I looked through the scope. I saw nothing that looked anything similar to a supply box or ammunition bag. The only magazines he had were those on his vest, which he had about five remaining of. Each magazine contained about five.

                _Also, if these bullets are able to penetrate our desks, why doesn’t he just shoot at the desk? Could it be he really doesn’t have any extra ammo and doesn’t want to risk losing it all?_

                Then, I turned around and looked at the long table, and then I saw it. A box of ammunition lying there. It appeared that Carl’s plan was to look out for us and then relay our positions to his subordinates for them to shoot and blast at. But when I smoked the whole place, he was not able to carry out his original plan, so he proceeded to come up front as well. Carl, like Kei, was also skilled in close quarters combat, and he thought he was able to get us from behind, but he did not know that Kei and I split up.

                _Well, then. It’s time to steal again, like Kei and I always did!_

                I slung back my rifle in preparation to move, raised my Beretta and started firing back. Shooting while moving decreases the accuracy of the gun as the moving changes the vector of the trajectory of the bullet, but there was a way to compensate for the change in accuracy, which was to shoot against the direction of the gunner’s motion. I was able to put a few shots on the desk Carl was taking cover with while making my way to the long table where the ammunition box was. My plan was to take it over and make sure Carl was not able to get his hands on it. This would force Carl to either come back and try to stop me or waste his bullets on trying to get me.

                _BANG!_

_One!_

I counted every shot that Carl fired and at every fifth shot I would make sure I ran even faster. Being able to memorize and predict the number of rounds a gunner has is a skill every Imperial soldier possesses, and with that said, Carl must have known that his grave was dug.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                All four of them were in front of me. Xi, Jin, Sammy and that other boy. Xi and Jin were Carl’s cronies. Sammy, unbeknownst to the disciplinary board, was secretly one of Jad’s followers, and he would use his authoritative powers as a prefect to give help to those bullies. I did not then know much about the other guy.

                “Let me tell y’all why I’m fighting.” I said.

                “Shut up! Let’s take him down!” shouted Xi, then the four of them went charging at me. I, too, charged at them.

                Heading on at me was Xi, right before I was within range, I quickly had both my legs put upfront, causing me slide on the ground at half my height on Xi’s left. After successfully dodging Xi’s attack, I slashed his leg with my knife. Ignoring a momentary scream, I used my other hand to stabilize myself and helped myself get up. Then, I planted a slash on his back while he was still recovering from my previous counter-attack. Xi then fell to his feet.

                “Why do you all keep sucking up to those grown-ups? They’re all scumbags!” I shouted, then paused to parry a strike from Jin. I had my right hand supporting my left hand, which I then used to push Jin’s blade up high and create an opening. I barely noticed her lifting a knee against my chest, a remise from Jin, but knocking her away was more important, so I bent my head down and jumped forward, thrusting my forehead at her face. Although I was not able to plant a bruise on her face, I was able to shatter the visor on her helmet. Of course, I took her hit, but I was able to put her down and buy myself time to take on Sammy, whom I turned around just in time to lock blades with.

_CLING!_

                “They call you prefects, their favourite and loved students. ARE YOU?” I continued to shout even as I clashed knives with Sammy. “They make you beat up any other student who hates them or the teachers, yet they give you the same punishment as those who try to stand up against them!” After pulling back, he tried to throw a few more lunges at me, all of which I was able to parry.

                _CLANG!_

                “They tie you up and have your backs and bums lashed! For what? Not killing! Not even stealing something, but for failing an exam!”

                “Don’t listen to him! Keep fighting him!” I heard Xi try to shut me off, but I refused to shut up.

                _CHAAKK! SHINGG!_

With one more successful parry, I steadied my feet up, locked Sammy’s blade to the side and lunged forward. Sammy tried to dodge by moving aside, but my riposte managed to land a cut on his waist.

                “You- you are all here because you like that kind of treatment?” Trying to hide the pain from my shoulder wound I received from that guy earlier, I continued to speak to them. “No, maybe it’s because you’re all scared of getting yourselves hurt. But you’re willing to hurt your own friends just to protect yourselves?”

                I heard someone’s footsteps from behind me, so I turned around. It was that boy, the one who managed to land a cut on my shoulder. I raised my knife at him, ready to attack, but the boy stopped. Judging by the look on his face, it seemed he was fearful and probably a bit wiser unlike his other three comrades.

                “Stupid shit! You should have just charged at him!” I heard Xi, who was coming at me from behind, rebuked the boy for being scared of fighting me.

                “NO! You’re the one who’s stupid!” I rebutted. I put my knife up to block his attack. “It’s okay to be scared, but look at yourselves!” Xi launched a fist at my visor before I could continue. The impact of his punch shattered my visor, hammered into my face and threw me into a broken desk and the four of them came and cornered me. Nevertheless, I continued to speak to them. “All of you are being manipulated into thinking that you can protect yourselves by becoming the big bullies and teachers’ favourites!”

                _Shit, I’m cornered. But I’ve got to get back on my feet and put a stop to all these hurt that we’ve been receiving. It’s probably more than just Ri and I and Patrice and her friends, there might actually be more of us who are afraid to stand up and fight against this atrocity, maybe even among these prefects!_

                I tried to look up and open my eyes a little bigger just to see how far they were from me. I frowned when I felt the pain from the bruise on my eye and cuts near my lashes from the visor shards.

                “Maybe that punch will shut your freaking mouth for just a while, but once we’re done with you, we won’t have to hear a thing from you anymore!” Sammy sneered.

                I managed to pull myself back up, luckily, I did not have any painful wounds on my legs. With my left hand I gripped my knife once more. Then, I saw one of them come upfront ahead of the other three. It was the boy who was scared of landing a hit on me. He turned around and faced the other prefects, whom I could very clearly tell were not very happy at him.

                “What’s your problem? You wanna be friends with this coward?” I heard Jin scowl.

                “Let’s stop, this person has done no wrong,” said the boy, very calmly. There were some, though few, of the bullies who would keep a respectful distance between Ri and I whenever we were provoked, but I was amazed at the extent to which this prefect was willing to go to stand up for me. But what happened next could not have spoiled the mood more. Without even bothering to say anything, Xi put a knee into the boy’s groin and kicked him a few times until he collapsed.

                _What an uncivilised brat! He was willing to ignore me and what I could’ve done in his distraction to them just so he could vent his anger on the boy!_

                “Hey! I thought he’s your friend?” I shouted, which I would later wonder how I asked such a dumb question. I did not imagine they would be this brutal. Xi locked the boy’s legs onto the ground with his own, then he continued to feed him with punches. “OI!”

                Xi then took out his knife and waved it around him.

                “Huh, maybe I’ll put you through my blade first before you try to stop us again!” I heard Xi speak sinisterly.

                “WAIT! STOP-”

                “UAARG-”

                I immediately had my line of sight shifted downwards before I heard a noise that sounded like the skewering of meat. I have been in the school for so long, been through so many punishments, but I have never heard the sound of someone shoving a blade into another person’s flesh. I hate to admit it, but for that short moment I was afraid of even the sight of my own knife.

                _No! I’ve got to stop them! I said I will!_

                “STOP IT! STOP HURTING HIM!” I charged my way towards Xi. Jin tried to intercept me but with a swing of my knife I parried her lunge and pushed her away. Sammy was next, he tried to slash me at my chest, but I had my body turned sideways as I continued running, escaping with a huge cut on my vest, I did not bother to knock him off. Finally, I extended my left arm with my knife pointed forward, I took a leap forward at Xi.

                “UUURGH!” I heard Xi shriek.

                When I pulled my knife back out, I saw the fresh red blood on my blade, there was a splatter of it on my hand as well. I heard Xi stumble in pain.

                _Why- why I am feeling some kind of pain, too? Wasn’t this person trying to hurt that other boy?_

                I heard Sammy and Jin charging in at me, so I was able to put aside this atrocious sensation temporarily, but little did I know that this guilt of killing someone would afflict me for the rest of my life.

 

* * *

 

In Ri’s eyes

                Carl and I had still been exchanging shots, he was even able to move from one desk to another as he tried to come closer to me, but for the past five minutes he did not fire a single shot. I began to wonder if he finally ran out of rounds. I would have tried shooting through the desk to get him but if possible, I was not going to take someone’s life by force. Still, I had my eyes locked at where he was, for if he were to get anywhere near me, he could easily beat me in a melee. I decided to stick my head out and call out to him.

                “Hey!” I shouted, I knew Carl was hiding behind a desk about ten metres from where I was, so I knew he could hear me and for some strange reason I could hear no shooting from where I presumed Kei to be. “Come out, Carl! I know you’re out of bullets! Surrender and I won’t kill you!”

                To my surprise, Carl did stand up. The pockets on his vest were opened and empty, it was clear that he emptied his magazines. I had strong reason to believe that he was done with the battle, after all he put himself in a situation where I could kill him anytime I needed. However, I was still curious about the anger he had in his eyes.

                “Please put both your hands where I can see them! Then, walk slowly towards me,” I shouted. Carl walked away from the desk he took cover from and slowly made his way towards me. What disturbed me was that he only had one hand up, his other hand was still behind his back.

                _Crap! He’s definitely up to no good!_

                I was not sure if Carl actually ran out of ammunition, but I knew he would not suddenly pull out a sniper rifle from behind and shoot. I then thought that he was holding his sidearm, but even if he still had bullets in his pistol, there was no way he would make an accurate shot. The head prefect, Kris, and her assistant, Carl, were known to have mastered the skill of quick-drawing, but assuming that he would presumptuously think that I would fire, I was not sure if he believed that he could succeed in a quick-draw. Who would beat the other? The one with a sniper rifle ready to pull the trigger on a stationary target? Or someone who would spend zero point three seconds taking out his gun before shooting? Obviously, it was the former. I suspected Carl was attempting to do something else.

                “To think... I could be outsmarted this badly…” I heard Carl vaguely mumble, then he finally stuck out his other hand, which he drew to his mouth. Then after hearing a “Clink” he moved the hand away from his mouth. It was as if he bit off something from the object he was holding.

                _Oh no! Seriously?_

                It was painful, but I pulled the trigger, I had to. Immediately, I saw blood gushing out from the top left corner of his chest. Unfortunately, Carl had already swung the hand which held the object, which I discovered to be a grenade. Any student in the school was able to throw a grenade as far as ten metres. I was forced to leave my rifle where it was and run for my life.

                _BOOM_

The explosion was bigger and louder than before. I then remembered that there was an ammunition box there, which also had a few grenades in it. I felt the flames from the explosion stamped a few burn marks on my leg as I made one last jump away as far as I could. I wondered how the World War front liners were able to withstand such overpowering decibels of explosions over and over again. I knew my legs were not blown off when I was able to get back up. I was not exhausted, but my ears were certainly done with hearing for the day. I looked back at where I stood and saw that the long table I took cover behind had turned into nothing but a few wooden fragments, some of which were still lit. The sniper rifle that I took from the Armoury was no where to be seen. Then, I went to the spot where I last saw Carl. He was there, lying against the desk. There was the fatal shot in his chest but I noticed that he had also been hit earlier in the shoulder, which meant that he was already injured. I pushed my boot onto his leg and when I saw that he did not frown or move, I knew he was dead.

                _Maybe someday in another place, we’ll be friends instead of enemies._

                Other than the teachers and instructors, Carl was one of the most disgusting people I knew, yet strangely it felt sad to have finally gotten rid of him.

                _The school makes being a soldier some cool hero, but maybe being a soldier is the last thing anybody wants to be._

                I barely heard the sound of blade-locking from a distance and I remembered what I truly came here to do. I pulled out my Beretta and stealthily made my way to the direction of those battle sounds.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                After Xi tumbled onto the ground, Sammy came at me. I swung my knife at him, I did not know where it got him, but all I knew was that he, too, fell to the ground and bled. I was barely able to dodge another attack from Jin, who managed to put a cut on my left arm. The pain forced my hand open and my knife down. With my blade gone, I was forced to bring my gun out to the knife fight. I pulled out my Beretta, aimed it at a recovering Jin who was within point-blank range, and I fired. Then, I fell on my knees in exhaustion.

                _Finally… They’re all down…_

                I crawled my way to the boy whom Xi was trying to beat up earlier. There he laid on an enlarging puddle of blood as he looked at me come towards him. I tore up his sleeve and attempted to tie them around the wound on his chest, but nothing would stop more blood from flowing out.

                “Kei,” I heard him call me. “Do you… really believe… in everything… you just said?”

                “Why did you think I fought so recklessly for?” I scolded.

                “If only… I chose the right friends…” I heard him mumble. “If only… I was not a coward…”

                I look around to see if there was a first-aid kit nearby but there was none. Then, I saw another person coming from a distance. I raised my Beretta once again thinking it was Carl, but it was Ri. I knew, then, that Ri had defeated Carl and had come to me.

                “I wanted to protect my friends, I thought that by becoming a prefect I could make their lives a bit better… But then, I ended up hurting more people…” the boy continued to speak. “Hey, do you think I can get a second chance?”

                I was hoping that Ri would be able to find some way to have the boy’s wounds bound but to no avail, even Ri thought that the boy was beyond any hope. But I refused to give “no” as an answer to his question, so I turned to him.

“You’re no coward, you stood up for me. That was a pretty dumb move if you asked me, look what’s happened to you now,” I answered. “I’ll tell you what, let me have your knife.”

                I proceeded to loosen the strap on his sheath and took it with my hand.

                “Ri and I are here to fight and put an end to all of this monstrosity, the injustice that all of us have been going through. We’re going to the principal’s office and take over the school. So how about I beat him using this knife of yours? Then you can say that we won because of you.”

                The boy started coughing, I suspected he was trying to laugh but the stab wound on his abdomen was preventing him from doing so.

                “Urgh- That’s an ingenious idea, Kei,” he replied. “No need a second chance… that would be… good enough…”

                “What’s your name?” Ri, who was beside me, asked.

                “My… name’s… Zack,” he was struggling even more this time, clearly his time was up. Despite such pain, he was trying to stick his hand up to me. “Hope… we… can… be… fr-”

                I grabbed his hand.

                “We will be, if not now, then another time,” I said. As soon as I was done speaking, I felt the weight of his hand increase. I looked at his face, and it was one of the greatest smiles I had ever seen. I got back up, and I looked at the bodies of the other prefects- Xi, Jin, Sammy, and Carl who was somewhere on the other end of the hall. “Same goes for all of you.”

                I removed the helmet and tossed it to the ground. Some of the attacks earlier made ferocious dent marks on my helmet that it became uncomfortable to wear, so I decided to leave it behind. Ri and I turned to the front where the long table originally was and walked there. There was a door that led to a single flight of stairs upwards. We left the hall, leaving behind the tragic memories of bloodshed, and hoping to end it all as soon as possible.

 

* * *

 

In Ri’s eyes

                “It’s just a single corridor to the principal’s room,” I commented. “Let’s hope things are simpler for us now.”

                There it was, right when we exited the stairway. We stood at the start of a corridor of about 50 metres of distance and ten metres of width. The space was not illuminated by light from the outside, but by light bulbs on the walls. The floor and walls were cemented. Right in front of us stood a slender and mysterious figure. This aura reminded me of someone I hated but was still pretty mysterious.

                “Someone’s here!” I heard Kei warn me from the earphone that still remained intact despite that super-close attack from Carl earlier that broke my helmet.

                And there I saw her. Her blonde hair tied into a ponytail, she was armed as much as we were, but instead of having a rifle, she had two sidearms and two knives.

                “Is that the head prefect?” I heard Kei whisper. “Damn! Those fools don’t know how to stop!”

                Indeed, it was her. She looked neither enraged nor sad, but there was something about her expression that told me that she came here by her own will. Although it apparently was, it did not look like her motive was to come and stop us, but it also seemed that she came to ask questions. What exactly was her deal?

                But more importantly, how were we to fight her?

                “Let me try to speak to her,” I told Kei. “Head prefect Kris! We are here to defeat the principal and take control of this school, if you step aside, we won’t kill you!”

                We did not spot a single move from her for the first few seconds. It was interesting to see that Kris had a very different personality compared to most, if not, all her subordinates.

                “I can’t… allow you to fight,” she said.

                _Wait, what am I doing? This is the school’s pre-Elite Block’s top student, if we keep standing around, we could at any time be shot dead!_

                I pulled out my sidearm and aimed it at her, Kei did the same with his AK.

                “Then I’m sorry Kris, we need to take you out!” Kei shouted, after which, Kris placed both her hands on the handles of her knives.

                _She’s using her knives? What in the world could she be up to?_

_RATATA-_

                Kei and I were in sync, we started firing at the same time. I repeatedly pulled the trigger on my Beretta while Kei did the same on his rifle. Our bullets propelled their way into the corridor towards the girl.

                “Woah! What the?” I heard Kei swore. It happened so fast, but I was barely able to see her wave her arms around.

                _CLANG! K-SHNGG!_

                I spotted several of the bullets from our guns colliding into the very blades of her knives before getting deflected into the walls. By this time, we stopped firing.

                “Are you kidding me?” I swore. “She evaded all of our bullets!”

                “She’s just the same year as us, isn’t she?” said Kei, overcome with disbelief. “Can the students from the Elite Block even do that?”

                _Crap! There isn’t any cover here! I don’t know what this girl intends to do, but if we just stay where we are we’ll get killed!_

                “Kei! Helix formation!” I called out via my microphone and saw Kei nodding in response. We did not know what Kris was planning to do, but we could not risk even letting her fire a bullet at us. The both of us grew up in the school. Every year, we watched this girl partake in the exams and how she had bullseye hit on all the target boards. We knew being her target boards was deadly, yet we had to find a way to beat her. Still, something did not feel right. “She hasn’t taken out her guns yet, but we need to make sure she doesn’t use them, so I’ll continue to shoot at her and make space for you to attack her with your knife!”

                “Got it, Ri!” Kei replied.

                We strafed from left to right as we moved closer to Kris, at the meantime we continued to shoot at her. While we knew none of our bullets could make it through her skills of dodging, we still believed that the strength to defeat her came from our resolve to change our lives.

                “Just ‘cause you can block bullets doesn’t mean you can block this!” Kei shouted before throwing his rifle forward. Doing that alone would not be enough to throw her off-guard as Kris had two knives, hence it was important that I continued firing at her with my Beretta. I emptied my cartridge as soon as I needed to stop shooting, it was that instant that Kris turned around and knocked away the rifle with one of her knives. I replaced the cartridge as soon as I could in preparation for our next phase of the battle, once Kei did his thing, we would be able to attack Kris from two sides.

                “YAA-” Kei, his knife in reverse grip, attempted to cut Kris from the side, but she was able to recover from the impact of the thrown rifle and block his blade with both of her knives. This was the chance and I fired. However, even with her back against me, she was somehow able to turn around on time and wipe my bullets away. It would have been half as disturbing if she had eyes on her back.

                _She’s still trying, but with our irregular patterns of fighting, she’ll be down soon!_

                This time, it was my turn to change the battle. I stopped aiming for her and started shooting her knife instead. One of my shots hit the forte of her blade, putting her into a momentary shock. It would not take long for her to realize that I changed my attacking style, but the main reason why her reaction to this attack would be her downfall was because there were two of us. Kei came back and threw a lunge at her from behind. I believe she heard Kei’s footsteps and managed to react on time to parry his lunge, but she was only able to do so with her other knife as she was still recovering from my attack. This negligence on her part became my opportunity to disable her.

                _BANG!_

                I aimed at the knife I fired at earlier and pulled the trigger, my shot went straight into the forte again. Kris dropped the knife, exactly as I hoped she would.

                “This is your chance, Kei! Now!” I said through the microphone.

                “This game is over! You should have used your guns from the start! HYAAAAA!” I heard Kei scream as he made one last charge at the head prefect.

                Kris abandoned the knife she dropped and turned her attention to Kei, who by then was executing his second lunge. Kris swung her knife, blocking the trajectory of Kei’s blade, but something caught her off-guard. By the time she noticed it, Kei, using his other hand, had a fist stretched out from behind his neck, ready to launch it into Kris’s eyes. Kei stomped his foot onto the ground, preparing for one great leap into his enemy.

                “Give her that punch in the face!” I cheered.

                _CRUCK_

_What just happened?!_

                “AAARGGGHH!” I heard the voice of someone wailing. It was Kei’s. I looked closely, and I noticed Kris lifting up her knee. Then, I realized with cold sweat dripping from my hands, Kris impaled his crotch with her knee. Since Kris was blocking the view, I was only able to hear Kei’s endless screaming, but I was able to imagine him rolling away in endless pain.

                “AAAAARGGHHHHHHH! IT HURTS! IT HURTS! AAARGG-”

                _Just who is this monster?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oww! That hurts, that last bit...
> 
> Thank you all for reading if you have been this far, in the next chapter this battle with Kris will be told, and concluded.
> 
> Next chapter: Confrontation III - Kris


	9. Confrontation III - Kris

In Kei’s eyes

                That day, when the instructor called me and the head prefect out for a bout, I was excited. I was excited to know what kind of power she possessed. I was told that the sparring matches involving Kris usually lasted less than thirty seconds, particularly if her opponent was not any of the strongest students, the prefects, for example. I think the students in the gym stopped what they were doing when they realized the match between Kris and I went on a little longer than usual. Needless to say, they were all they cheering for Kris and booing at me. Of course, I could still hear Ri’s cheering among all the boos.

                Kris and I at the start were just exchanging a little swing of blades. I then remembered overhearing someone mention that Kris always let her opponents make the first move. I refused to make the opening attack because I wanted to remain cautious and attentive. Being surrounded by all the boos was not really a problem for me, it was looking for a weak point in Kris. A minute had passed and suddenly Kris decided to attack. Swiftly and sharply, even with me waiting for her to move, she was so fast that I dared not attempt a parry, I just backed off. And right when I was about to counter-attack after she was done with her first lunge and in the process of recovery, which I had thought she was in, she again raised her feet and threw herself forward again, I had never seen anyone attack and remise consecutively with such speed. I would have backed off again, but I was in the middle of extending my arm and to suddenly put a stop to what I was doing would waste precious time. I decided to not stop my move and continued to extend my arm, not for the counter-attack, but to put my luck in repelling her second attack.

                _CLANG!_

                Thankfully, I blocked her move, but I put too much strength in it that I was not able to initiate a riposte, so I retreated.

                _Just being able to remain standing in a match with her could catch the attention of everyone else. But guess what, I’m about to show the crowd that they’re wrong for booing at me!_

                “Hah!” With my blade pointed at Kris from an outer angle, I initiated an attack, one that supposedly composed of two main steps, it was called a “bind”. The first was making contact with Kris’s blade and diverting it away from me. I was able to pull through and at that time I believed Kris fell for my trap. It was for this reason that for one second the crowd went silent. Then, it was time for the second step, which was to follow-through with a lunge.

                _This time I’ve got you!_

                As if she was welcoming my attack, she grabbed my main hand with her backhand and pulled it towards her. I lost my balance even as I closed in.

                _Wait, oh shit!_

                I then realized it was me who fell into her trap. I knew what she was going to do, but due to my lack of balance, I was not able to do anything. I helplessly watched as she raised her left leg up and planted her foot in my face at the same time she let go of my hand. The sound of students laughing began to ring in my ears even before I could land on my back.

                “Point for Kris!” I heard the umpire declare. It was humiliating, not because I had someone kick me in the face in front of everyone else, but because I lost in front Ri, whom I was just showing off my skills to earlier. I always believed that by being able to withstand a few of her hits, I would one day surpass her in strength, but little did I know she was just holding back.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                _YOWCH!_

                Before I knew it, my fist unclenched and I was flying backwards, and the pain inflicted at **that part** of my body suddenly amplified a multitude on its own. I landed with my back and the back of my head smacked onto the ground, but none of that pain was able to distract me from the pain caused by Kris when she thrusted her knee into my crotch.

                “HWAAAARGGGGH!” even as a veteran of receiving punishment, I could not remember a time I felt more pain than this. Ri came to me and pointed his gun at Kris.

                “Stand back!” shouted Ri. Considering how the both of us were not able to get a hit on Kris with our guns, Ri was pretty brave for trying to protect me.

                _BANG BANG_

                As expected of the thoughtful Ri, he fired at Kris’ knife on the ground which she was trying to pick up and shot it away so that she could only use one knife.

                “Let me try fighting her!” said Ri.

                “URGH- Yes! Go! AARGH-” I replied, despite succumbing to the pain that still remained.

                _I don’t think Ri will last very long against her, but I must use whatever time Ri’s buying me to recover, so that we can both attack again!_

 

* * *

 

In Ri’s eyes

                _There are no obstacles in this place. If Kris had meant to kill us, she would’ve done it right when we entered this hall, but she’s holding back for some reason. No matter the reason, I’m not going to go easy on her!_

                “I’m going to borrow this,” I said as I stretched my other hand out in reach of Kei’s sidearm.

                _I need to know how she’s able to block those bullets._

                I held up both my guns, their lines of sight straight ahead but parallel to each other. As Kris was before, she did not move an inch. Obviously, she was confident she would somehow dodge my shots.

                _BANG BANG_

                The two lead projectiles, one after the other, launched out from the barrels of my guns into the direction of Kris. But as they closed in, one flew past on the left of Kris, the other on the right. As I thought, Kris again did not even shake. I deduced that Kris was trained to determine the trajectory of a potential shot just by judging from the gun’s sight, hence she must have known that my shots were not going to hit her.

                Again, I fired a few shots, in pretty much random patterns according to my own muscle memory. There were about six in total, I made sure that at least two of them were headed for Kris. As I expected, Kris flicked her knife, deflecting one of my bullets that was heading into her chest. While she was doing that, she also dropped to the ground, then with a hand on the ground supporting her body, she somersaulted away from a second bullet that was heading for her heel.

                _Does this idiot not know I’m testing her?_

                I remembered the words of my shooting instructor, whom I deeply despised yet was wise in what he taught. He once taught us that when a person shoots without focusing or thinking, he tends to shoot in patterns- in fours or threes. The person would shoot a few times in a row before a split-second break, and then fire again. The proper way to shoot was to put every thought into every shot. In other words, plan what you shoot, and do not shoot blindly. According to the instructor, you would not only be accurate in your shots, but you would find it easier to manage your ammunition as you would be completely aware of the remaining number of rounds in your magazine. This was one of the reasons why Kei proficiently sucked at shooting as he did not usually think before he pulled the trigger.

                Earlier when Kei and I opened fire on her, we were not very cautious with our shots. As proved by Kris’s ability to dodge us, we were too predictable. However, she cannot easily predict where I would shoot next if I intentionally, and consciously aimed at random parts of her.

                _Crap, if every other instructor and teacher in the school were able to deflect bullets like her, I don’t think Kei and I are going to succeed in our mission. Regardless, we must try._

                “Alright, Kris! Your refusal to retaliate will be your biggest mistake!”

                First, I fired at her left shoulder, this would force her to bend her elbow and sweep the bullet heading for her backhand. As expected, she reacted right on time to reach the bullet. My second shot was for her forehead, which she was also able to block. I decided to take a small gamble by firing near her right shoulder, fidgeting with her sense of judgment. However, she somehow noticed that I had intentionally aimed for that shot to miss, hence she took the opportunity to recover. Even though I was back to square one, I did not hesitate to start again. My fourth shot was fired at the toecap of her left boot. Seeing that she skidded her foot away, she must have known that it was going to hit her, and this was my chance to put her down. I fired at the toecap of her other boot, which she skidded away as well. Now she had both feet in a good distance apart from each other and she was prone to fall at almost any time.

                _Now it’s time to disarm her._

                The trick was not to aim at her, but it was aiming for her knife. If Kris knew a bullet was about to hit her, she could easily just dodge it or flick it around. But if she saw that a bullet was instead heading for her knife, this would cause an irregularity in her coordination. Regardless of any situation, a surprise is a surprise. She would react unfavourably to a shot on her weapon, which she might either move her hand away and let it hit her, or allow it to stay where it was, allowing my shot to reach her knife. There is another reason why I would succeed- by shooting at different parts of her, I established an illusion that I would always be aiming for her and nothing else, she would not even consider her weapon as part of her.

                My sixth shot launched away into her knife. As anticipated, it ricocheted off the guard of her knife. The impact of my bullet and her weapon produced a slight graze on her main hand, causing her to grunt in shock and irritation. More importantly, she was finally disarmed.

                _I got you now!_

                I wasted no time and fired one final shot aimed at her forehead. I knew she was not going to dodge it as it would require time to re-posture herself from the body-split I forced her into, which also made it hard for her to jump away if she wanted to.

                But once again, Kris proved that there was more about her I had yet to learn.

                Unnoticed at that time, Kris had her backhand slipped into one of her holsters. By bending her elbow, she was able to have her sidearm aimed roughly at me, or so I thought at that time. It was a quickdraw technique only few students were able to master, one that required the shooter to be able to equip a handgun in as little time as possible and fire with as much accuracy as possible.

                _BANG CLING_

                Kris was so fast; I could not tell by which second she fired her gun at me. It seemed that although our line of fires was different, our bullets were in a collision course for each other. Flashy sparks were produced in the space between us, a little closer to me. After the impact, I was barely able to catch my bullet deflecting off its original line of fire by a degree or two, just missing Kris’s shoulder by a few inches. The collision between both bullets did alter the direction of her bullet slight, too, but unfortunately not as much.

                ”GAHHHAAARGG!” I shouted in pain as I fell on my knees. I checked to see what happened and I realized a huge cut on my left shoulder where blood stained my torn left sleeve.

                _Did she just block my shot by firing at it with her gun?_

                “Oh, I’m sorry,” in the midst of me trying to stop more blood from dripping out, I heard Kris utter. There was not an iota of cynicism on her face. “I- didn’t mean to hurt you.”

                _This girl is not even trying to kill us! Her examination results are just an understatement of her true power! Can we even put a scratch on her?_

                “Argh- I’m back, Ri!” I felt a soft pat on my other shoulder. I turned around to see who it was, I saw Kei who, though he still staggered once in a while, was back on both feet. “I’m truly amazed. You put up a superb fight, Ri, I would never be able to last this long in a gunfight with her. But I think I’ve figured out how we should defeat her!”

                I heard movements from the front and I immediately turned to see what Kris was doing. I caught her picking up the knife I recently shot off.

                “Ah, she picked it up, but it was great thinking the way you shot away her other knife earlier,” Kei complemented. Despite the pain on my shoulder, I continued to keep watch to make sure Kris did not try to pick up her other knife. “However, this time I have a plan.”

                “What’s that?” I asked, feeling slightly relieved.

                “I’m going to approach her and fight her. I’m going to try and fight her in such a way that you are facing towards our sides. You went for CQC classes, you should know what an ‘attacking move’ is, don’t you?” said Kei, after which I nodded, in melee combat, an attacking move is the move initiated by a fighter when the battle just started or when other attacking moves were completed, it was simply the lunging of a knife, or the throwing of a punch, or also a kick, any move that, if successful, would result in damaging or crippling a fighter’s defence was an attacking move. “Use your gun to intercept any attack she would make, if you can try to disarm her like our plan earlier go ahead and do so, it will be easier and safer to do this from the side view and don’t shoot if you’re not facing our sides as you might risk shooting me. Let’s hope she doesn’t figure this out and if she does, I will fall back and use a new strategy.”

                Partly distracted by his talking, I only noticed later that Kei tore off his sleeve to tie it around the wound on my shoulder.

                “Just shoot your best, Ri,” said Kei. “I know you’re injured, so don’t push yourself.”

                “No, you can still rely on me, this wound won’t really affect me,” I reassured, after all we were all trained to use guns while holding them with just one hand.

                _At least for now, we know that Kris does not intend to kill us, and that she will follow that rule for now._

                “YAARHH!” I heard Kei exclaimed as he made his first move. My point was supported by the fact that by then she had already unequipped her gun and was using the knife. His left foot about to stomp the ground, but not before he would pull his straightened left arm from left to right. It was a horizontal slash and he was aiming for Kris’s throat. Of course, there was no way anyone could defeat her with just one move. She repelled his attack by swing her own knife in the opposite direction. It was not my time to shoot yet, the plan was to shoot when she would attack, not during her parries or counter-moves. Kris commenced a single marche, quick as thunderbolt, and even with Kei already recovered in a defensive posture so as not to be kicked in the balls again like earlier, it seemed that Kris had a different counter-move. With her vacant left hand, she had her hand on Kei’s arm, pulled it towards her. Even with Kei unstable and about to fall in her direction, he made sure to lift his own knee as a guard against her, to prevent what she did to him earlier. However, Kris was not going to do the same thing. Instead, she raised her left leg up and planted a foot into Kei’s abdomen. Kei was pushed backward, this time he struggled to regain his posture as he was about to fall backwards.

                Even if Kris did not intend to kill, it was important for her to make a lethal move that would potentially disable her opponent. Hence, I anticipated that she would make her move this time. The leg that she used to kick Kei was pulled back, her foot on the ground, she began to advance quickly towards Kei, who was struggling to recover. As soon as she extended her right arm, I knew she was going to attempt a lunge at Kei. Thankfully, I had my gun ready and aimed already.

                _I’ll aim for her weapon now so that she’ll think I’m still doing what I did earlier._

                A bullet travels at 300 metres per second horizontally. Kei was knocked back about one and a half metres, and their bout was ten metres perpendicular to where I was standing. I judged that it was possible to land a hit on the forte of Kris’s knife if I fired at the centre of them as soon as possible.

                _BANG_

                I pulled the trigger once, at that point Kris had just begun to extend her main arm which was about less than a metre away from Kei. My bullet would still reach on time as the velocity of my bullet was still superior.

                _CLING_

                By some bad luck, even though I fired from a perpendicular angle, she was still able to detect my shot from the corner of her eye. Instead of proceeding with her lunge, she flicked her knife around and deflected the bullet that was headed for her.

                _Of course she can block that, she was even able to block shots from behind, but that doesn’t matter! I’ve created an opening for Kei!_

                Kei, by pushing from his back feet, extended his entire left leg before surging it forward. Done so quickly and silently, he even held his breath so that he would not make a sound when completing the attack. And while all that was happening, his left hand was already straightened and making a beeline for Kris.

                “Guh!” it was faint, but I could hear Kris exclaim in shock. For a split second, once again, I observed a change in her facial expression, and for that short moment, she was irritated, but after that she was calm again. Kei’s move was so speedy and stealthy that Kris did not even get a chance to move her legs back and retreat. Unfortunately, all it took was for her to flick back her knife. She was able to catch Kei’s blade with her own guard. Not only was his knife diverted to Kris’s left, it was locked in place. I believe Kei anticipated that she would try to do a riposte, so he put all his strength once again onto his left hand and pushed her blade away, shoving it to the left.

                At that point, Kris had prepared another move. She lifted her right foot and attempted to destabilize Kei, who at that moment was still in his post-lunge posture. But Kei knew that she would make such a move, in fact he was going to use this opportunity once again to let me land a hit on Kris. Immediately and without waiting for Kris’s foot to get near, Kei began to retreat by pulling on his straightened back leg, which began to bend and give way for his front leg to move back. It was clear he read Kris’s mind as he moved so fast that there was only open air for Kris’s foot to kick. This was my second chance.

                _BANG_

                I fired again without waiting any longer. You should have seen the look on her face. She, Kei, and I, the three of us understood that there was no way she could deflect a bullet with her shoe. Perhaps, if her boot had a blade attached, she might have been able to. It was harder to coordinate leg movement than hand movement, but I would not expect Kris to just give up and get hit. The bullet barely scraped the side of her shin right below her knee shield. It was not a direct hit, but it definitely put some damage on her judging by the crimson splatter on other parts of her shin and on the hem of her military shorts. Judging by the severity of bloodshed, I knew that it inflicted some pain on her, even though the shot did not break any bone or wound any muscle.

                However, there was no time to take a break. Kris was not wounded and she would not stop there while fighting the both of us. In fact this time she would be more cautious. As expected, Kei took this chance to unleash another attack at her, a diagonal slash from his top left to the bottom right. It was a menacing move for Kris who had her back partially against Kei. But even with that pain from her right leg, she was still able to turn around on time and react to Kei’s attack. She did not divert it like she did earlier, instead she returned a strike at Kei’s knife, repelling it in the opposite direction. After doing so, she moved back and around, with her front at my direction. It was clear to us here that she was getting a sense of what we were doing. Regardless, as long as Kei did not retreat, I should not stop either.

                Kei closed in on her, attempting to bring their battle sideways to me, but Kris apparently knew what he was up to and she kept retreating towards the back.

                “Don’t think you can run from me!” shouted Kei, who started running towards her. Right as he closed in, he raised his knife for another slash which was parried easily. He grabbed Kris’s main forearm, took off from the ground he stood and with the help of pulling onto Kris, he somersaulted over to the back and landed on his feet again. Kris was then directly in front, but it was not yet the time to shoot as Kei was going to put a better set up. Kris began to come back slowly at my direction as she was blocked from retreating to the back. Then, it appeared that she decided forcing Kei to the back would be a better idea, so she started a few attacks of her own. Kei was able to parry those attacks, but her aggressive moves were coercing him to move behind slowly, perhaps Kris was trying to extend the distance between her and I as she knew getting nearer to me would increase the risk of her getting cornered. And by doing so, she would have a better fighting chance against Kei. However, Kei had other ideas.

                _PING_

                Kei had just repelled a slash from Kris, but Kei maintained his posture there. It was hard for me to see as Kris was blocking the view, but then I saw Kei had his right-hand reach for something at his back.

                _Is he planning to use Zack’s knife? But he won’t reach Kris at that distance, unless-_

                I figured out what he was about to take out, but I refused to turn my head to confirm it as I wanted to know what Kei’s intention was. As proven from the somersault over Kris and the shoving away of her knife even when it was her who successfully parried his attack, Kei possessed brute force and was in that part superior to Kris. He was not then as good a shooter as I was, but even so he knew how to take advantage of his strengths. Kei picked up the gun I borrowed from him earlier and placed in his holster which he repositioned on his back behind the flak layer. Because the jackets are loose, Kris did not at all notice that he had another weapon on him. I was impressed that he would think of doing such a thing in a battle. What impressed me even more was that Kei attempted to execute the same quickdraw technique that Kris used on me. Kei was indeed horrible in shooting, but at this distance separating him and Kris, it was almost point-blank for him. There was no way Kei would miss if he fired. Kris must have realized this as she decided to evade his attack. She did not even try to repel it with her knife as it would have been difficult to challenge Kei’s strength in wielding the gun. It was here where she made her most reckless mistake. Kris, in evading Kei’s gun, leaped to the right of the corridor, and again the both of them were on each side of the corridor, allowing me to fire once again.

                _BANG_

                This time I aimed for her knife and pulled the trigger. Kris somehow anticipated my attack so she turned to me. She made one wave with her knife from up to down and deflected my shot with that. Of course, she was not going to be defeated there, but in the next move. Kei swiftly charged into her; he was so quick on his feet and hands that he executed a slash before Kris could even turn her head around. Kris was disarmed of her knife finally. Kei opened his last card, which was a punch from his right-hand. Kei must have tossed his gun away after that move he made. Was she finally wide open? Could she possibly counter-attack again with another kick in his balls? Or maybe use another quickdraw? She was sideways to Kei, but was she still better than we thought? Thankfully, Kei’s fist went through.

                _CRUCK_

                The fist pummelled into Kris’s nasal bone, and she flew to the ground, landing on her left waist. Her nose must have been bruised so hard that I noticed blood from her nostrils. It was bizarre to see that she still refused to use her guns to attack us. I had a quick peek at the spot where Kei almost fired his gun and I saw the gun on the ground, confirming that Kei did toss it away so that he could have a free hand to throw a punch at Kris.

                “Argh,” Kei got to her side and had a knife at her throat when she silently groaned. Maybe Kris was just not good at expressing her thoughts by voice.

                “Why didn’t you use your guns from the start? You would’ve defeated both of us even before we would have seen you,” asked Kei.

                With Kei’s knife at Kris, it was safe to assume that the battle was over, I lowered my own gun and headed over to them.

                “I don’t want you to die,” she said. “Please don’t.”

                Kei removed the knife from her neck, we understood that she earnestly did not want to fight.

                “What do you mean?” said Kei, perhaps he was going to mention that he and I faced enough suffering in the school, but he wanted to hear Kris explain.

                “The teachers, the principal, every adult in the school,” she said. “From the start, we’ve all already been had.”

                _So, she understands._

                “I’ve lost so many friends, because of those adults,” Kris continued. “They all died, most of them for just failing an exam, others who tried to be rebellious. I don’t want the both of you to die fighting them, if you both die it will make me sad.”

                The head prefect was always so quiet and soft-spoken unlike her rowdy subordinates, we had never seen her express her true feelings, and those few sentences she spoke made us finally understand a little of her. What tragedy did she face to be struck with such sorrow? I wondered.

                “I’m sorry, Kris,” I could only utter.

                “Yeah, me too,” said Kei. “Look, Kris, you don’t want to be alone in this suffering, and that’s why you don’t want us to die, it’s the same for both of us. But you, Ri and I, we understand that the School Board is our greatest enemy. They’re the reason we get hurt, they’re why we feel so much pain today, and they have always been trying to make us think we’re their machines.”

                “Urgh,” I felt a pat on my left shoulder, where the bandage was and groaned in a little irritation. Apparently, Kei forgot that I had a bloody graze there.

                “We’re willing to throw away the belief that we’re war machines for the glory of the Nation, because we believe that there would be no point in living if we had to live like this forever, however, that’s not to say we would rather die,” said Kei. “That’s why we’re here, to change things for us, and seek out the truth, and what’s outside this school.”

                Then, I heard her sniffle, just once. Kris was pretty good at making no noise, but it was very clear- the tears flowing from her eyes. What was she going to say?

                “I’m- so useless,” she cried. “I couldn’t do anything, nothing, to protect my friends, I tried to save them, those who were sent downstairs, but they were all tortured to death.”

                Amidst the sobbing, Kris began to sit up. it was a little disturbing that her hands, which were supporting her upper body from the ground, were lifted.

                “One by one, they were sent to that Counsellor’s room in the Elite Block, I once had a peek into that room to see what treatment the students were getting, and then I realized they were not there for psychiatric treatment, they were there to be toyed with,” Kris continued.

                _What?! So, she knew about that too?_

                “OI! Kris, you saw that too?” Kei shouted.

                “Yes,” Kris replied. “I heard their screams, I was too scared to report to any teacher, so whenever another student was sent to that Counsellor’s room for their so-called treatment, whether it was someone who failed an exam or someone who broke the school rules, I would try to ask the Disciplinary Teacher to let off the student, but he never did and he would always push me off.”

                “Screw those people!” Kei cursed. It was painful hearing Kris’s testimony. However, Kris who was initially sobbing with her face down, looked up at the both of us. It felt like she had gone through everything the grief-stricken Patrice had gone through, but there was something even more disturbing, and for some reason, the both of us, Kei and I, began to have our guards up again.

                “The principal’s a powerful soldier, you will certainly lose if you try to fight him, then the school will have the both of you sent to that Counsellor like those other students were,” she continued to explain, though I could not help but notice that her hands were shaking vigorously. “I tried to stop the both of you from doing that, but it looks like I was too useless, I couldn’t even succeed in that. It really scares me to see you move on like this.”

                _I got a bad feeling she’s up to something not good again._

                “The last thing I wanna hear is any other student’s scream from that room, much less the both of yours,” she said. “Which is why, I would rather take both your lives now.”

                I then realized that I was so distracted by her words that I did notice her hands on both her holsters.

                _OH SHIT! WE’RE SCREWED!_

                I could feel it. It was not some sinister aura like we experienced whenever we were with Jad or those other boys. This was the feeling that we had every time we watched Kris sit for her exams. It felt like that time when she shot down all those target boards in the blink of an eye. Kei and I were her target boards, and we were about to be killed! Kris had both hands on both her guns, and she was going to execute a double quickdraw and shoot us both.

                _There’s no escaping her quickdraw! But I have to do something!_

                I then remembered that moment when she deflected my shot by firing her own gun.

                _I can’t use my knife, I’m not even as good with it as Kei is, but maybe if I try that…_

                I, too, with the gun in my hand, raised it once more to eye level.

                _At point-blank range, this might be the only way to save myself. Kris, I’m sorry._

                _BANG!_

                The two of us fired our guns at almost the same time that the sounds of our gunfire resonated.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                _Crap! I shouldn’t have taken my knife off her!_

                There was no way to evade Kris’s attack, she could shoot faster than we could even twitch our femur muscles, and she was using both her guns, even if Ri could disarm her gun that was aimed was for me, he would have to fend for himself. Slashing her gun away was an option, but its time cost was risky. The fastest kind of attack with a knife was the lunge. It was possible to aim for Kris’s gun and hit it away, or at least divert her aim. It was hard to aim for the barrels of her gun which was of a small diameter, but it was the only way!

                “HAHHH!” I exclaimed.

                _BANG_

                The gunshot sound resonated in my ears, I thought I was done for, but when I opened my eyes to see, I realized…

 

* * *

 

In Ri’s eyes

                I was caught in such a panic that I forgot that I had my eyes closed. I opened them to find that I was still standing on both my feet. Then I looked in front and realized what happened. There was a crimson wound on Kris’s right shoulder, I deduced it was the result of my unthinkable attempt. I was able to fire my gun at the bullet and not just divert its trajectory, but also went on to hit Kris. Her right hand hung down by her waist, the gun that she carried in that hand was on the ground a few metres away. I was not sure what Kei pulled off, but I was sure it was unthinkable.

                _THUD_

                Kris fell to the ground, the puddle of blood that drenched the sleeve of her shoulder got bigger slowly. While the gunshot wound was the only major injury she sustained, it was quite apparent that she was physically worn out, especially after restlessly forcing her arms and legs into around and about in combat. At the end of the day, the amount of physical strength she possessed was not much more than what Kei possessed, much less both of us combined.

                “Maybe I should tear another sleeve from my shirt,” Kei suggested.

                “No, the wound’s too severe, it will not be enough to stop the bleeding,” I rebutted, but honestly, I was going to go with his idea anyway as we did not have any first aid kits nearby. I was a little sad at the thought of having another student die at our hands.

                “My… My back pockets…” I heard Kris stutter. I checked the back pockets on her flak jacket, in them were some bandages.

                “Wow, didn’t think you would go this far to prevent us from dying,” Kei commented.

                “In your righteousness, you fought us, Kris, for that we will spare you, anyway it’s not you we’re after,” I said.

                “N- n- no…” I heard her cry out softly.

                “Ri and I are going to beat the principal and take over this school,” said Kei. “So that none of us will have to go through this suffering. Also, stop calling yourself useless, I’m sure you did everything in your power to save those students you wanted to.”

                I reached out into her other pockets and emptied their contents into ours, then we set off. We did not bother to hear her out again, we just continued to walk to the end of the corridor, where there was a metallic door. I pulled the slide on my Beretta and picked the bullet that came off the ejection port, then I tossed it to the door. The bullet hit off the door and fell onto the ground without making any spectacular scene.

                “Forgive me, Kei, I was being a little too cautious,” I said as I turned the knob on the door. We entered the dark room, and there were no traps in there as far as we went.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                “Some more weapons here,” I said, looking at some shelves with loaded pistols and ammunition clips. What was weird was I was pretty sure the room we were in was the executive’s room, the office for the head of teachers.

                “I don’t think we’re gonna need more of those, we just took the clips from Kris’s pockets, although, that was to make sure she would no longer harm us,” Ri said.

                “Yeah, I know, I’m just looking around if they have ammo for my rifle,” I said, I was about to mention it would probably be useless since the AK looked broken after I threw it Kris earlier. I noticed a strange contraption on another shelf, it was not switched on, but then I noticed another device beside it. “Isn’t this what they called the ‘drone’ we learnt in piloting class? It looks like a variation of the one used in exams.”

                It was a light-weight machine with a square base, any child was capable of carrying it with both hands. It had four rotor blades that were capable of lifting its weight into the air. What was cooler was that a person could control it using a touch-screen device called a “remote control”, which was the device beside it.

                “That’s certainly interesting, but I doubt it’d be of any use against the principal,” Ri commented. I agreed and decided to leave it there, but before we left, I noticed that below the base that supported the stands for the rotor blades, there was a gun-like barrel, attached to it was a clip, I suspected it contained submachine gun rounds.

                The door to the principal’s room was finally right in front of us. It did not look like there were any traps set at it, so we opened the door. We were a little nervous, the principal was someone who only appeared in front of us students once a week, he did not appear even for any student’s punishments, which were all done by the lower-ranked teachers and instructors. None of us even know his name. This principal, to us, was just a man in a suit and tie, we barely even remember his face, but then came the time for us to finally bring our confrontation to him.

                His room was about a quarter of the area of the office hall where Ri and I fought with the prefects, which was pretty big for a teacher’s office. Lined up along the walls of the room were shelves full of paperwork and cupboards. In front of us, at the end of the room, was a man sitting at a desk, whose fingers were moving around on a touch-screen keyboard. This man was either deaf, or had more important things to do on his computer than face some rebellious students like us. Ri and I raised our Berettas at him, but we did not obtain cover from the cupboards. I would have loved to pull the trigger on my gun, but we did not know what tricks this principal was hiding.

                _Tap!_

                The man finished typing, and then he turned around on his armchair to look at us. The reflection light on his glasses made it hard for us to see his eyes.

                “You students are supposed to be receiving your respective punishments, just why are you sent up here?” he said dispassionately.

                _You stupid fool._

                “We would rather be expelled, the school doesn’t need delinquents like us,” I said, trying to force my anger out on him.

                “The school carries out punishments according to Imperial standards, we cannot make decisions as we please,” he replied, in almost the exact same tone.

                “LIKE HOW YOU TORTURED PATRICE AND THE OTHERS?” I shouted. I wanted to know what he truly thought about all the things he made us face. “How dare you even send your own students to their deaths to fight us! Aren’t you adults supposed to be examples to us children? If so, why didn’t you send yourselves instead of us kids?” He kept silent for a brief while before opening his mouth again.

                “Students Kei and Ri, if you do not comply to instructions, not only are you going to repeat the year…”

                “DID YOU HEAR ME YOU STUPID OLD MAN!” I shouted as I pulled the trigger at him. “What in the world?!”

                It was an extremely rare case of me striking the bullseye, but that was not the thing that had our jaws open. The lens of his specs at his left eye was shattered, blood was gushing out from his burst eyeball, but the principal was still standing.

                _This man is not even human! A cyborg!_

                “Well, since we’ve got a memory alteration device here in this facility, I may as well just open up in this conversation,” he continued to talk like nothing happened to him. The man took off his broken glasses and tossed it into the trash bin. “I am a human, unlike what you both are thinking now, my appearance and my strength has just been physically altered with the help of machinery, but for the main reason of looking exactly like the actual principal.”

                _Huh? What the heck’s he talking about?_

                “I know the Governing Board puts inhumane treatment on the students of these military schools, what poor little kids, they have nothing to protect them, no law to acknowledge them, for most of them were either once criminals or the children of criminals to be used as lab rats,” he continued talking, he appeared to be very knowledgeable, perhaps he understood what we knew, and what we were truly here for. “Like I give a damn, I’m just a spy.”

                “A spy?” Ri asked. “I don’t care if you work for the government or for someone else, tell us what you’re doing.” Unlike me, Ri refused to let himself be drown in confusion and wanted to know more on what was going on.

                “Wow, such inquisitiveness,” he said. “It’s truly as the data suggests, adults who have their memories wiped and de-aged into children still retain their mature personalities.”

                _Woah, this man knows about the secrets of the experiment involving us! Everything we discovered by accessing the library’s secret information, he knows them too! I thought it would’ve been Kris who would have killed us, but now I feel like I’m about to tremble!_

                “I’m from what you people call the ‘Chaos Territory’,” he continued. “I was sent here to find out about the secrets of the Nation and what the Imperial Army is up to, I never knew they were developing a much superior and effective military technology than the Chaos’s use of human mechanization. They would not have to spend so much on building clanky armour and machinery. However, that would all soon be nothing, because I have found a flaw in their project, a weakness I can use to prevent the project from achieving its purpose!”

                “Damn the Imperial government! And you! Just what is this flaw?” Ri shouted.

                “Who knows? And Imperial lab rats like you don’t really need to know, right?” he replied.

                “Well screw it anyway! It won’t stop what we’re about to do to you now!” I shouted, I lost my patience and I just wanted to get rid of him. Sadly, I made the same mistake I promised myself not to make.

                “Hey wait! Kei!” I heard Ri shout.

                _BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!_

                I pulled the trigger countless times.

                “I already told you, boy, I’ve got lots of metal frames implanted within my skin,” the man said. I knew he was right when I saw some of my shots that hit his arm ricocheted with torn parts of his skin, revealing a metallic frame.

                “Damn you!” I pulled out my own knife and rushed into him.

                “Stop it! Kei!”

                I ran at him with my knife aimed at him, as I got near, he grabbed my main arm, pulled it away and twisted it. The pain from it caused me to drop the knife and the next thing I knew; I felt a fist in my stomach painful enough to have me down on the ground.

                “Don’t touch him, or I’ll kill you!” I heard Ri shout, he thought I was about to be finished, but I had one more knife with me.

                “I’m sure you’re now aware that bullets are not enough to kill me,” the man warned, he let go of my arm which he was still holding on to. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill him yet, not before I show you what I achieved at my time here.”

                “I’m not finished yet!” I got up, but with the pain in my stomach still there, I could barely stand.

                “I am a soldier, but I am also a scientist, a neurologist to be specific,” the principal said. “I’ve watched the simulation battles that the Elite Block students have undergone, and I studied their brain activity throughout the battles. There is a certain brain activity that occurs when a person is facing something he or she fears.”

                We were in the middle of a battle, yet it felt like this man was reminding us of something we discovered in the library. We could not help but stop where we were and listened to him.

                “I then accessed the databases of some students and I found some of their phobias. I then had an assistant of mine do the dirty work for me,” the man continued. It then occurred to me that this “assistant” of his could happen to be the counsellor. “Yes, now that you mentioned it, there was a student named Patrice, and she had an extreme fear of bullets which was worsening her performance in school, apparently she had this fear before she even had her memories altered and her body de-aged. This was the same for several other students. This discovery was significant for me as it meant that people retained their fears and phobias even after memory alteration, which was a weak point the Imperial scientists overlooked.”

                The man stretched his hand out to a drawer in his desk and pulled it open. I thought he was going to pull out some kind of bomb or powerful weapon to subdue us, but instead he pulled out what looked like a piece of rubber – a balloon. Upon seeing it I then remembered the words of a certain someone who appeared to me once and then disappeared:

_I don’t know if it’s true for you now, but at least you once told me you had a fear of balloons._

                Before I knew it, the man had already inflated the balloon by blowing air into a hole in it, then he tied the hole up and gently held the balloon up, then he looked at me.

                “It’s just a balloon, you stupid old man! It can’t hurt me!” I arrogantly shouted back at him. I picked up the knife I dropped earlier and raised it, ready and stab him, until he said something that shook me.

                “I searched your files, too,” he said. “And I know what you fear.”

                _Clink_

The principal, with his other hand, pulled out a knife from the same drawer and slowly moved the blade toward the gentle rubber surface of the balloon.

                _Clank_

                The knife which I had just picked up, I dropped it again. I felt nauseated, even though my stomach was empty after fighting in the Administrative Block for half a day. I could not focus on anything, it felt as if my mind just got flung into the stars.

                _Why? Why am I feeling so horrible now? Why can’t I move my hands or legs?_

                “As I expected, this is how you’re reacting to an inflated piece of balloon, what you’re feeling is a sensation of anxiety,” said the principal, and strangely he was right. Just hours ago, I was fearlessly brawling with the prefects, and suddenly now I felt like I was tied up in the basement.

                “No- Surely… It’s just… a balloon… right?” I barely had the strength to speak out. “Then, why… am I… feeling… like this?”

                “That’s because in your life before your memories were altered, you also had this fear of balloons,” I was still able to hear his reply as I fell back on my knees, trembling in cold sweat. At any time, I was probably going to throw up everything inside of me, even though it had been about half a day since I last ate.

                “Let him go! You bastard!” I heard Ri shout out. I heard him fire a shot at the principal. Blood gushed out from his other eye, but then I realized it was useless.

                “Have you forgotten that I am also a machine?” he said. He had mechanical eyes, destroying his fleshy eyes meant nothing to him. “Wait there for your turn while I give this boy the fright of his life. Don’t worry boys, once I put both of you in the memory alteration machine, it will all be over.”

                _No way… To think… that we will… go down… in battle… full of fear… And that we’re… just… lab rats… for anyone… who has power…_

                “Unfortunately, I can’t put any of you out of your miseries just yet, I need to gather more data for my superiors in the place you call the ‘Chaos Territory’,”

                “UUAAARGGHH…” I vomited.

                _What… a… cruel… world…_

_POP_

                I trembled on the ground for a moment when the sound of the balloon bursting reached my ears, thankfully it was not as deafening as the grenades that were thrown earlier that day. I looked up and saw that the balloon the principal held was now just shreds of rubber.

                _What just happened? Who saved us?_

                Ri and I turned around to see who it was who stood at the door of the room. It was the both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone who has been reading, especially if you have reached this far, and those who have been offering me opinions and thoughts on my story. I am sorry to say that the last chapter of this story will not come out very soon as I will be busy with the beginning of the semester. I will be definitely continue working on the final chapter and have it posted as soon as I can, which would hopefully be in the next next two months.


	10. Confrontation III - The Rescue Team Has Arrived

In Patrice’s eyes

                I opened the drawer beside my bed, in it was a cloth, it was wrapped around a bullet, a _nine-millimetre_. Just some time after I began attending forced appointments with that wretched counsellor, my friend Kris, who was also the head prefect, gave me it to me. She told me that if every day I held it in my hand and looked at it, it would reduce the anxiety I felt day by day. I thought it helped, but the counsellor must have realized it and he became even more vile in his treatments. He would tie me up from hands to feet and slash me with a whip. I received scars all over my body, some of them, particularly the one on my eye, would scare of other students whenever they saw me and they would try to stay away from me as much as possible for they thought I was one of those who got punished by the teacher for doing something bad. I cried almost all the time when I was alone in my room. I became so frightened that I would not look at any bullet, not even anything shaped like one or anything that could store bullets. It made me nervous and anxious whenever I attended firearms classes that I even failed in the exams. Then, those stupid teachers thought that I needed to attend more of that bloody counsellor’s appointments.

                “GAHH!” I shrieked when I thought I felt a cut on my face, but when I touched it, I then remembered that it was just a scar.

                _Crap! It was just a flashback._

                I found it difficult to sleep. Maybe, I did not want to. Every time I did, I would get petrifying nightmares of that man tying me up and cutting me up with his instruments. I had enough of seeing him, much less seeing him in my sleep. I had thought many times of trying to end my misery on my own, and I was planning to steal one of the knives they used in the kitchen, until I met them. I did not tell them I was going to try and hurt myself, I just told them I wanted something to eat.

_They better be okay, they promised they would be._

Maybe it was still better that I stayed alive, the last thing I wanted to happen was Risha, Coleen, Andy, and Kris crying at my death. I knew Kris well; she was a true friend. She snuck into my dorm whenever she was able to just so that she would accompany me and make me feel better when I went to bed. Of course, I still cried myself to sleep. She would talk to me about the other students who were sent to that counsellor, some of whom were people I knew too, and she, too, would tear until her eyes were dried in the morning.

                Since Kei and Ri took me back to my room, I had been there for quite a few hours. I wanted to be left alone, and I did not want to hear from anyone but the both of them.

                “Attention all students! There has been a security breach at Section A. All students are to return to their dorms immediately and in orderly fashion, no one is to move outside except for teachers. The perpetrators’ location is unknown and moving away from your dorms will put you at a security risk. I repeat...”

I heard a man’s voice from the intercom speak, but I began to lose my patience. Were Kei and Ri in trouble? I did not want to be caught again, seeing that counsellor’s evil face was the last thing I wanted to do.

                _But I can’t do it, can I? If I could, that counsellor would never have done all those things to me in the first place._

                Something must have happened for the announcement to be made, but I had no idea what it was. Regardless, it was a chance for me to decide.

                _I may be scared of bullets, but I can still fight!_

 

* * *

 

In Kris’s eyes

                Almost every other night I would have this dream- it was a nightmare because it would always end with me seeing two man die. It was strange that I did not remember their names, but I felt like they were people I knew, perhaps they were even people I once cared about. Those two men would get killed by another man, who then had me dragged away, tied up. I would then cry helplessly until I hear my alarm clock ring. It was funny to be having that same dream over and over again, yet strangely it resonated with what I felt all the time. I wonder which one resulted in the other, my feelings, or the dream?

From the very moment I found out that they were using us as specimens of some experiment, I began to use my powers as a head prefect to try and save some of my friends. Yet, one after another, they were all sent to the basement and to the counsellor. There were those who tried to defy the teachers’ orders, like Kei and Ri, but they too, suffered the same fate. I don’t know what happened to them after that, hopefully they did not die painful deaths. Then, Patrice got sent too.

                All these blood from the wounds made by Kei and Ri were nothing compared to everything I faced.

                If only I was not so soft and scared, maybe I would have been able to protect them.

                _Thud. Thud. Thud._

I heard the noise of footsteps coming from the entrance to the hallway. I had initially thought it was the disciplinary teacher who came to punish me for being unable to fend off the disobedient students.

                “Kris! Are you okay? Say something!” It was her, Patrice, one of the few good friends I had left. I felt ashamed, I promised that as a prefect, I would keep her safe, yet here she was coming to save me. “Here! Have this to drink!”

                Once she came to me, she put a bottle at my mouth which I then helped myself to.

                “You can have this sandwich too,” she said, handing a box of sandwiches to me.

                “Where… did you get this from?” I asked, I was surprised she got her hands on some canteen food, considering she was generally scared of most other students and teachers.

                “I stole it from the canteen with Kei and Ri earlier,” she explained.

                _I see, those boys must have found a way to break into the canteen and taught it to her._

                “You know, Patrice, you’re braver than you think,” I told her enviously.

                “No, I’ll always be pathetic until I’m brave enough to hold up a gun,” she replied. “Listen Kris, I came running here because I just heard an announcement from the intercom saying there’s a security breach…”

                “If you’re looking for them,” I cut in. “They beat me in a battle and went off that way about five minutes ago.”

                “No, it can’t be that, it’s been more than twenty minutes since I heard the announcement, if it’s because of Kei and Ri breaking in here, I would’ve heard it much earlier,” said Patrice. “I think there’s more to the danger this school is in.”

                “This school is the field of their experiments anyway,” I apathetically blabbered.

                “Wait, so you knew?”

                _Oh, so she found out about it too?_

                “Well, we need to get to Kei and Ri now,” said Patrice. She seemed to be a little more talkative than usual, something must have happened between her and the two boys that took some of her fears away.

                “But they’re fighting the principal as we speak,” I said.

                “Then we need to step in and help them first,” said Patrice.

                “But you can’t really use a gun, can you?” I asked, but Patrice seemed to have more confidence than she usually had.

                “I may be scared of bullets, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fight,” she said, patting a sheath at her waist. “You can have those sandwiches, I’ll go on.”

                “Wait,” I said while getting up. “I can walk, I’m just feeling exhausted, and my shoulder stings.”

                I swallowed down the sandwiches and went with Patrice, who helped me as I walked. I did not know I was so hungry until then. Why did I want to follow her anyway? I was injured, yet I did not want to see her die. We entered the executive’s room. We walked past some shelves with weapons on them, there were some further away from us with loaded magazines, Patrice must have deliberately stayed away from them.

                “Is this a drone?” said Patrice who seemed to be unaware of the ammunition magazines a few shelves away. She turned to look at one of the shelves we were passing and saw a half-metallic device. It looked like a miniature version of an old Black Hawk, but instead of having just one rotor on top, it had four. Patrice clicked some of the buttons on another remote-control-like device and the rotors on the drone suddenly began to spin. “Hey, this is like what they taught in piloting class!”

                It was faint, but I heard gunfire from the room ahead.

                “It must be them!” said Patrice, eager to move on. I went to the ajar door to take a peek at what was in there and as I had feared, Kei was down on the ground, his partner seemed to be standing from afar with his gun but refused to shoot anymore. The only other person in the room was a blood-splattered faced man who appeared to be holding an inflated balloon, I did not know why his eyes were bleeding, but when I saw him holding the balloon, I realized what he was doing to make Kei struggle in agony.

                _If only I was strong enough, I would’ve prevented this._

                “Wait, Patrice!” I held onto her hand. “Are you sure? Once you enter the battlefield, you’ll be in it until you lose!”

                “We won’t lose, Kris!” she said.

                “Okay, then how are you going to save them? You’re not that good with the gun, are you? Surely you’re not thinking of charging at him with your knife?” I insisted.

                “Well, I just noticed that there’s something here I can use,” said Patrice as she turned to look at the device on the shelf. I then realized what she was up to.

                The way Patrice decided to rise up from her fears, it really amazed me. If it were not for what she did, I would not have been able to overcome my fears that day.

 

* * *

 

In Ri’s eyes

                _After fighting our hearts out just to get up here, are we actually going to lose now? I was so confident we could keep our promises to them – Patrice, Zack and Kris, yet here we are helplessly watching this monster feed his own ego._

                Then, I heard a fluttering sound from behind, I wondered if we were joined by some more teachers who came to witness our punishments, but the fluttering alarmingly began to move from behind and even hovered over us, even the principal turned his eyes in interest.

                _Drata drata_

                Gunshot sounds spilled all over the room and I ducked down to take cover, but when I heard loud ricochets in the teacher’s direction, I got back up to see where the shots were aimed at and what was shooting them. It was the same contraption I found earlier in the room before the principal’s, the drone! But a drone could not be controlled without a user.

                _Who’s that controlling the drone from behind that door?_

                It was apparent the drone was capable of firing heavy machine gun rounds while airborne, I was extremely impressed. The bullets it rained down smashed the metal frames on the man’s chest and barely missed Kei who snapped out of whatever that was taking hold of his mind when the balloon popped.

                _Fshinngg! Chack!_

                Still the principal, who would not feel pain due to the lack of pain receptors on his modified skin, flung the knife he held at the device in the air and successfully disabled it, causing it to fall to the ground. Unbeknownst to him, Kei took the chance to fall back to the door as I did.

                “Whoever’s in that room, come out, or I’ll come and slaughter you after killing these boys,” said the principal.

                The door that was left ajar creaked open, revealing two girls of about the same height, both of whom were familiar. One of them had short black hair, a scar above and below her left eyelid and had an exam-standard dagger in her right hand. The other girl she helped to walk and stand had blonde hair with a ponytail tied at the back of her head, she had a blood-soaked bandage tied around her left arm. They were Patrice and Kris.

                “What are you girls doing here?” I heard Kei shouted, and I was just as shocked. I remembered us telling these two girls to stand down so it was bizarre seeing them there.

                “We’re here to fight alongside the both of you,” said Patrice. There was silence from both sides for a moment, and Kei who would normally shout back decided to remain silent as well. I could not tell if we were actually furious or worried or happy, or maybe all at the same time. Then the principal broke the silence.

                “I guess you’re all specimens of an experiment, so you have all nothing to say eh,”

                Kris who came to my side had her hand reach into one of my pockets and before I could react to her sudden move, she whispered to me. “I’m going to borrow some of these, if you don’t mind.”

                _BANG! BANG! CLINK!_

                Kris, who I thought was badly hurt and exhausted, appeared to have a gun in her uninjured hand. She fired a couple of shots at the principal. I was about to ask her to stop and tell her that the principal had a body impenetrable to lead bullets when she said to the rest of us:

                “The drone disrupted the protective plates covering his _main battery_ , shoot it now while you have the chance!”

                We knew what a cyborg was and how it works, but it took us some time, unfortunately too long a moment to process what she just said. Not only was the principal a fake, he was an enemy disguised as the original principal, working to infiltrate and transmit data back to his own headquarters. What was more, he was also a cyborg and a dangerous man capable of fighting grown adult soldiers, and we were just some children who learnt basic military skills and tactics. Of course, we were relieved to be rescued, but we were not expecting Patrice or Kris to be there. What was more, Kris, whom we just defeated in battle earlier, was asking us to fight against the principal. There was much confusion and so many questions to be asked that by the time we decided that what she said was true, the man had taken cover behind one of the cabinets.

                The four of us, gathered at the centre of the room, and with our backs against each other’s, watched for the principal’s footsteps. It was said that cyborg technology could enhance a person’s strength. The principal was capable of jumping away from the cabinet to another within a second, hence it was necessary to be aware of his location at all times. I was about to suggest to the other three to gather in Formation One – a tactic used by combatants where upon entry in a danger zone they could potentially be attacked from all sides. We needed to be in this formation not just to defend ourselves but to have a good chance of hunting down the man. But the other three apparently understood what we had to do. The two of us, Kris and I, had guns, while the other two, Patrice and Kei, did not have guns. Kris and I were to fire whenever either of us spotted the principal while Kei and Patrice, who held daggers, would attack if the principal ever tried to close in on us. Since the man did not take out any other weapon from his drawer, it was safe to assume that he did not have any other firearm on him. But was it even possible to incapacitate a man with enhanced power?

                There was a loud stomp on the ground. The principal’s move was so swift even Kris who had both eyes on the cabinet he was hiding behind barely saw him leap off into the right side of the room. She fired and a ricochet was heard, but I doubt it hit anything significant. Not before long, he left his cover again and leaped to a corner at the back, Kris missed again.

                “Five o’clock!” Kei spotted. As my line of sight was much closer to the principal’s hiding spot, I fired my gun before he could acquire new cover. I noticed a fragment of the man’s internal armour broke off to the ground. I wondered if I had hit jackpot or anything close. Kris was on standby, my gun was ready for firing, Kei and Patrice were to spot. It felt like the four of us were being confronted with a predatory beast from the wild.

                _THUNG!_

                I heard another stomp this time and I was sure the enemy was going to make another, and whether it was a direct move against us, I would have to pay real close attention.

                _CLINK!_

                An object flew up into the ceiling right above the four of us, I fired but missed, and then realized I was being played.

                “Grenade!” I shouted, Patrice pulled Kris and herself away in dispersal, but Kei refused. And when I thought we were being played, we were in fact double-played. I later discovered that the object thrown was just a pen.

                “No! Look behind you!” was Kei’s voice before I got pulled and thrown aside. It was rare for Kei to notice something that I did not. His light and firm hand grabbed the untorn sleeve of my uniform, it was Kei’s. When I was down on the ground, I turned to see what happened. The principal galloped in from the back-left side of the room and charged towards Kei, or perhaps he had been aiming for me as well. Kei tried to slip his blade past the principal’s arms into the exposed battery of his cyborg body but was met with a fist to his stomach before he could reach. I had no knowledge of the force of a cyborg’s punch, but Kei plummeted into one of the cabinets on the right wall, shattered one of the drawers and had himself caught among the files of the drawer, sheets of paper scattered upon impact.

                _BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!_

                Kris was firing her own gun. She had all shots accurately pinned on the spot where the man’s battery was, but the man was able to render them to waste as he held his left hand to cover his exposed chest. Kris’s bullets were able to chop off the mechanical fingers on his hand but any good chance she had was cancelled by her finished cartridge, and just when she was about to switch magazines, the man quickly made his move. It was then that I realized I was too overwhelmed with shock at everything that was happening that I did not even attempt firing my own Beretta, and when I did, it was too late. With just a smack from his right hand, he forced the gun off my hands. I reached for my knife but the principal, who could read what I was doing, seized my main arm and squeezed with all his mechanical might. There was blood flowing out from that part of my forearm where he was squeezing and reluctantly, I let go of my knife. I would have attempted a punch with my other hand had my left shoulder not been grazed by Kris’s shot earlier that day, but I doubt that would have worked on the principal anyway.

                The man let go of my forearm when he saw that I was finally disarmed, then he seized me by the neck. I shook as hard as I could, I grabbed his hand with my own and tried to shake it off, but to no avail. I was helpless and at the mercy of my enemy.

                “No!” I barely heard Kei cry in his coughing.

                “Don’t move! Or I’ll strangle him to death!” warned the principal. He must have seen Kris attempting to reload. “Looks like **_The Leader_** was right when he said not to toy too much with the specimens of the experiment, look what a mess I’ve caused.”

                I was disappointed to see that this man hesitated in killing me, I guess he saw me as some valuable data that he needed for his superiors in the Chaos Territory. And it was not just him, even Madam Genie and the other teachers saw us that way.

                “Kris, listen to me,” the principal ordered. “Pass the gun over here, and I will not kill the boy.” I could hear faint sniffling, it was definitely Kris’s. It was absolutely disappointing, I felt as useless as some of those toilet bowls that were in some of the cells (some prison cells did not even have them). Kei and I sacrificed our goodwill, our dignity just so that we could will ourselves to murder some of the other students who were in the same shoes as us. We would also have murdered Kris had she been more stubborn than she was at our battle. But we were not all defeated yet. The principal saw us as bargaining chips, so he would not kill us if he did not need to, but he was threatening to take my life if Kris or Patrice attempted to make a counter-move. I had another trick up my sleeve, and might have been the second last one, so I decided to persuade Kris to attack.

                “NO! KRIS! SHOOT HIM! AARGGHH—”

                The man strengthened his grip round my collar, ready to commit to killing me if needed, but it was my last hope, to persuade Kris into attacking the principal, and it was probably the best because from the looks of it the principal did not know that I had a grenade. Surely, she must have been sad to do so, I heard her share what she felt about our intentions earlier and seeing anyone else die was the last thing she wanted, even more so it was for my friend Kei, but I thought then it was the greatest loss to be coming up all the way here after so much pain and sweat just to lose and have everything be as it was.

                “I’m warning you, head prefect, don’t fire the gun, if you do, I won’t just kill this boy, I will have your friend Patrice and that boy, Kei, sent to the counsellor,” the man threatened. It was strange to note that he did not want to send Kris to the counsellor, perhaps he knew what Kris’s phobia was.

                “Alright,” I heard Kris reply, to my disappointment. “Here, take the gun.”

                _Damn it all! It’s impossible to take out someone who knew all our weaknesses._

                “No! I won’t let you, Kris!” I suddenly heard Patrice scream. This behaviour displayed by Patrice was out of my expectations.

                “HEY YOU!” the principal once again tightened his grip on my neck. Because I was facing him, I could not see what happened, but upon guessing I was amazed at what might have been happening.

                “Put the gun down, Patrice! It’s for your good!” the principal shouted.

                _Patrice snatched the gun? But she’s afraid of bullets!_

                “’For my good’ you pile of crap! I will blast through that sick battery of yours! Urggh—” from what I heard she was still terrified of the gun she held, but regardless, she forced herself to take the gun from Kris.

                “No! If you try, you will kill your own friend!” I was sure Patrice’s hand was shaking as the principal replied, but he suddenly seemed to be afraid, I could tell from his loosening of his grip on me.

                “You think that I am afraid of bullets and that I would not be able to get a hit at you? It may be true that I am scared to use a gun, but I have finally grasped what it means to fear!”

                “Shut up, you kid!”

                “I’m sure Kei and Ri fear losing this fight to you way more than Kei fears balloons, and yet they’re here regardless of the possibilities!” said Patrice. Never was I so touched by the way she decided to resist her fears. “The bullets loaded in this gun and itself are definitely what I am scared of, but they are not something I can’t use to fight. But I know you have something you fear, too! You and your partner both desire power, the power to be able to torture your lab rats as you wish, without them you’d have none!”

                I was impressed at the way she threatened the principal and certainly it was working, but I still refused to believe that he would willingly toss me aside and give in to Patrice whom she saw as a helpless little girl. I was not going to use my last trick initially as this man was attacking us earlier at highly unpredictable speeds, but I think this was the perfect situation to use it, and even if it was not going to kill the cyborg, it would save me. I was able to reach for the fragmentation grenade I had hidden in my backpocket. A grenade takes four seconds to detonate after unpinning. I took it out, and unpinned it, but I did not immediately toss it into the exposed part of the principal’s chest. Since my back was facing Patrice and Kris, I believed they saw what I was attempting and Patrice would wait a while before shooting.

                “Stop it! I’ll kill him for real!” the principal shouted. I tossed it at him, it was impossible to aim without him realizing it so I had to gamble. “Aaargh!”

                I was kicked away, the principal used the same hand he used to grab me to attempt to block the grenade, which deflected off the palm of his right hand into a several feet away from him. The man immediately turned around to run, but before he could take any step away the grenade blew apart and engulfed him momentarily in a shockwave of flames which quickly dispersed. The principal fell flat on the ground, at this point there was barely any part of his upper body clothing that was left, two fingers on his right hand were blown apart and the skin on his neck was shredded away, revealling a metallic joint. I remembered to back away this time, away from the explosion and to the direction of Patrice, who had already dropped the gun in order to get a hold of her nausea. I looked at the man to see if he was still alive. To our horror, it was then that I saw him slowly getting up again. By some misfortune, maybe, the explosion was not able to destroy the battery in his chest. The man stood up, all skin from every part of him from his feet to his jaw had been consumed in the explosion, revealling a mortifying body of wiring and machinery. I grabbed the gun that Patrice dropped and aimed at the centre of the man’s chest, then pulled the trigger.

                _CLUCK!_

                And then I realized something else, that Patrice had been using an unloaded gun all that time.

                “I see, so that’s how you were able to just hold it,” I said to the girl who was on her knees with her mouth at the ground.

                _CLICK CLUCK!_

                “Put the gun down,” came the voice of the principal, whose voice was no longer human and more robotic-like. He had a gun in his hand, the one that had three fingers left. I suspect he took my gun which I dropped when I got attacked by him. I was about to replace the clip with one of those in my pocket, but with his gun at us, I decided to wait and see if something would happen, although I knew that our chances against him were pretty slim. This time, Kris came forward with a knife in her hand, I had a feeling she was going to try and block whatever the man, or rather, the cyborg was going to fire, but I had a bad feeling that she was exhausted to her limit and had not even recovered from our battle earlier.

                _FSHHHAAKK!_

                It was accurate and precise. A knife skewered its way into the palm holding the gun and its magazine. There was not any blood gushing out, for I think most of them had already been drained out, but I believed it cut off some wiring within that stopped him from being able to move the rest of his fingers.

                “YAAAAARGGHH!” it was the shout of my good friend Kei who sometime ago took a hit from the cyborg and crashlanded into the cabinet. The Chaos agent threw his left arm at him, which was now in a rod-like shape without the fingers.

                “KEI! WATCH OUT!” I yelled, the man’s rod-shaped arm, which turned sharp at the distal end of it was about to turn my good friend into skewered meat and I could not help but shriek.

                _PKANGGG!_

                It was unbelievable. If I did not watch him carefully, I would not have believed that he tugged his knife out, which he had shoved into the bones, or rather, the mechanical wiring within the man’s palm and just in time to shove aside the principal’s attack. Just minutes ago, this agent had just demonstrated to us his power and cyborg strength. Then, Kei was able to parry his attack like he would do in any knife match. It was then that I began to believe that strong convictions give us more strength than any weapon or armour would.

                “Guh,” said the cyborg, although in a slight robotic voice, but with a tone of irritation. “Guess I’ll just have to do this.”

                “GAHH!” smacked with the other arm, Kei was thrown onto the ground as the cyborg walked toward one of the cabinets at the wall. He opened the top-most drawer and produced another rubber-like object. Among the worst things we hoped it would be, it was a balloon. Before we knew it, the cyborg had somehow inflated the balloon to near-popping size.

                “No!!!! Kei! Get away!” screamed Patrice. She knew what it was like to have her emotions toyed against her own will.

                “Now then,” said the principal, who picked up his gun and turned it once more to us. “I shall put all of you to rest.”

                _Is this the end for us?_

_No, it was the end for him!_

                _PING!!!_

                The sound of what was not a gunshot, but instead a blade-clash ensued. So loud was it, I realized later that the balloon had been popped. Kei, whom I thought was down on the ground, traumatised and nausea-torn, bound by the sight of the thing he feared the most, was apparently on his feet. With a swing of his knife, he disarmed the cyborg of his gun. Then, like a monkey, he leaped onto the front chest of the cyborg who began to shake violently in an attempt to remove the boy. Kei raised his knife and was about to jab it into the centre of the cyborg when a metallic arm belonging to the man gave him another smack. Kei fell off, and his knife was down on the ground further away, but he did not stay down.

                _What just happened? Did Kei achieve the power to overcome fears?_

                “I need your help once more, Ri,” I heard a radio whisper from my earphone, which I had thought was long gone from the battle. I then saw Kei had a finger on his microphone button. I wondered, what could I do to help? “Distract the enemy for me, like you’d always do.”

                Then, I had an idea. I loaded a clip into the Beretta. I turned to the other two to share what I thought. Finally, the odds of this battle were going to fortune us.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                The principal, who was revealed to be a cyborg, held the hole in the balloon to his mouth, where a mettalic tube extended into the balloon, appearing to pump air into the balloon, within the next second it was inflated, and I felt an urge to puke.

                _Come on! Don’t vomit! Just being near a balloon won’t hurt me a bit! I’d be even more hurt if this entire operation that I started with Ri to save ourselves were to come to an end now, and if I were to lose Ri and everyone else who have worked so hard to just survive, I’d regret it for life._

My stomach was being insistent, it felt like I had just drunk spoiled milk, but I refused to back down. With whatever willpower I had, I forced my legs to stand up, and my hands to get moving. The principal who was looking at the direction of Ri and the others had no idea I had pulled myself out of his trap. By some miraculous intervention, I was no longer under the balloon’s psychological influence. I waited no more as I headed straight for the gun he held and hit it away with my knife. Then without waiting for him to react to my move, I jumped onto his chest and had my knife thrown into the centre of his chest where the battery was. Unfortunately, the cyborg began to shake me off which delayed my attack, giving him the chance to knock me away with his arm. My knife was thrown aside as well, not in good range for me to retrieve it. But this time, I had an idea.

                I tapped the button for my microphone, which was still intact even after all those battles, then I said, “I need your help once more, Ri, distract the enemy for me, like you’d always do.”

                I only said so much. My face was down for a second, and did not want my enemy to realize that I was communicating with my partner on the other side. Nevertheless, I trusted my partner and I believed he knew what I needed.

                “You’re out of weapons, little boy,” said the principal, trying to convince me to surrender and give in to the life I was trying to resist. He sounded like Madam Genie everytime she was going to strike us with a whip; and like Jad or those prefects whenever we met. “If you think you can face me head on, you must be mocking me!”

                _No, you’re the one who’s stupid now._

                Ignoring his proud words, I ran on at him, who reacted with a little disgust. And right when I was anticipating it, or perhaps it was a tad bit faster than I expected, I heard the fast-moving footsteps from where the principal turned his head from. I was sure he heard it too, judging by his hesitation in putting all his focus on me.

                _Even if you beat us all now and had our memories reset to square one…_

                “Take this!” followed by a loud “ping”, the cyborg body of the man suddenly seemed to lose balance and extended his legs as though it were making a split. Patrice and Kris, one on each side, ran past the principal, each with a metallic rod, and they slammed them into the legs of the man, who gave in. The hit was not hard enough to make him lose balance, but it did give way for something more substantial. And then, I heard it.

                _BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!_

                “YAAARR!” I saw Ri slide on the ground under the cyborg’s legs. With his head as bent upwards as he could, and his gun raised to aim backwards, he fired and fired, putting the cyborg in a surprising amount of shock, who was trying to dodge so as to protect the exposed battery in his chest.

                … _This evil that you manifest will always lead us to rise and resist it, and perhaps if it does happen, there will be even more of us then._

                “HYAAAAAAAAA!” and unbeknownst to our enemy, he had let his guard down.

                “WHAT THE?!”

                _CHUCK! BZZZZZZ!_

_How could Zack stand up for me even though he knew the other prefects would beat him up for betraying them? How could Kris try to help her friends by using her power even when she knew she’d risk getting herself in trouble? How could Patrice use a gun to save me even when she knew she had a fear of bullets? Surely Ri was afraid too, but he never turned his back on me, not once since the day we first met. But I understand now, it’s not by staying away from fears that we survive, but rather by learning to live with them._

                There I had my two hands on the knife I took from Zack, I jumped at the principal once more and shoved the knife forward. Even the cyborg arm that he stretched out to stop me was futile. Nothing could stop the strength of righteousness of our fight, especially when it was at work. It was at this point I began reminiscing the times when Madam Genie and the disiciplinary teacher abused us in their methods of punishment and in our pain and the times when the teachers would praise those students whenever they teased and tried to hit us. It felt like there was no purpose in our life and that the dogma they established about us and our obligations to eliminate all that was evil was just bullshit. But finally, at this one moment, I began to feel what it was like, to even think we had a purpose in life, and I was definitely looking forward to knowing what it was, finally after all this time.

                _If only I had understood this earlier, that everyone, even those bullies, the prefects, and Patrice and her friends were afraid to stand up against what was oppressing us all, we might have decided to fight these teachers much earlier, and then we might’ve been able to taste freedom. But none of that matters now._

                _KA-BOOM!_

My knife made its way into the opening created by Patrice’s drone earlier and penetrated the battery. It felt like I was jabbing my knife into that part of my mind that held all those nightmares. I felt a slight electric shock, before being fired back across the room by the shockwave of an explosion, one much louder than all the previous grenade explosions I heard. I was subdued in the aftermath of being at point-blank range from the source of a deafening explosion. When I finally thought I got a hold of myself, I was flat on my back with my hands at my ears, my arms and legs were full of scratches, probably by the fragments from the cyborg body when it exploded, I had no idea my one final move would result in such a blinding firework. I tried looking around to see if Zack’s knife was nearby, but I was only able to spot a knife that had its blade broken from the forte. I must have broken it. I then realized as well that the vest I was wearing the entire day had finally torn at the velcro at the shoulder which helped to support the front and back of the vest. Most of the pockets at the centre of my vest had disintegrated, exposing my inner school uniform which had torn as well, but not as severely.

_Rest in peace, Zack._

                I believe I regained my hearing when I heard Ri and the others coughing, so I knew they were still alive, but I doubt they were on their feet after such an ear-piercing explosion. The strength on my legs, which I had been exerting, finally wore off, and I refused to get up, but I looked up and waited for the smoke to clear just to be sure that it was all over. The smoke cleared, and I saw the body on the ground. It was the principal’s, he was charred and blackened especially at the centre where his battery or heart once was. Upon seeing this, my head fell back down to the ground.

                “Come on Kei,” I heard Ri’s voice, accompanied by the sound of footsteps. “Let’s go.”

                “Yes,” I opened my mouth after staying on the ground for about a minute. Then I looked up at Ri who came to my side and I felt my nose and eyes began to water. Even though Ri and I were determined to see this operation through to the end from the start, none of us really believed that we could defeat everyone and anyone who would stand in our way. Ri stretched his hand out to pull me up, and I grabbed it, and it was then that I also realized- we had spent the entire day fighting and fighting without break, not even one to stop for a snack, but I would agree it was all for a cause worth fighting for.

 

* * *

 

In Kei’s eyes

                It was then like earlier that morning when we bumped into Patrice at the kitchen and did not speak, but instead of grieving, we were all just too tired. Ri, who conceded a little lesser injuries than me helped me to the only chair in the room, the principal’s chair. I sat there as I listened to Patrice crying again. I guess Patrice was always a crybaby. Kris just remained where she was after the explosion, I could not tell if she was just staring at the ceiling or asleep, but I knew she was well when we made sure earlier that she did not faint or enter into shock.

                “Man, I’m tired,” said Ri, who fell to his knees.

                “Maybe we should send one of us to grab some food from the canteen,” I suggested, struggling to keep myself from dozing off. The principal, the leader of all the monsters we despised so much was finally defeated. Was it over? I thought. For all these past years, my mind had been so transfixed on this one moment, and it finally came to pass. Honestly, I was disturbed at how reality could be such a wet blanket. Of course, what were to do? We beat the principal, although technically he was not the principal because he was actually a spy from the Chaos Territory. But what were we to do with the other teachers and students? What if the government realized what we were doing?

                “Ri… could you… grab… the… food…” I finally gave in to fatigue and rested my head on the table. Then, I noticed on the keyboard, which I had long thought to be destroyed in our battle, a blinking red button. My tired fingers somehow slipped their way to the button to press it, lighting up the monitor, proving my earlier fears right. I sat up and looked into the computer as though I had forgotten that I was feeling sleepy and tired. Of course, on it was displayed something so fairly alarming that I was beginning to agree with the way life does not really go our way.

                “Hey guys, something’s up,” I said. Very soon, Ri who had sat at another corner came to my side, followed by Patrice who stopped crying and Kris who was lying on the ground. I read some words in a flashing box in the screen:

                _Intruder alert! There is a security breach at Section A. Emergency procedures are being carried out, would you like to activate cameras?_

                There was an option to view cameras, but when I clicked the button, the screen turned black, and the words “no signal” were in the middle. Then I clicked a box with the word “details” and I was led to another box that listed a good amount of information. And then I saw:

                _Alert detected 50 minutes ago_

                “Fifty minutes ago? We were still in this room,” said Ri, and he was right, we were in the middle of our battle with the principal. “This could not have been our doing, we broke into the Administrative Block earlier today, and that was so many hours ago!”

                “Ah! I did hear an emergency announcement earlier before I left the room, I was going to tell you about it after the battle, but I wonder what it is about.”

                “Honestly, what could even be happening now?” I tried standing up, and then I felt all the pain from my legs- the pain that comes after you overexert the muscles in your body. “If they are heading for here, we should try to take in all those weapons in the room behind, then we can use them against those intruders.”

                I was not sure if I was in my right mind. Not only was I exhausted, I had foolishly no plans whatsoever should our resistance succeeded and primitively believed that any other problem could be solved upon defeating the principal of the school. Now that it was happening, I was too tired to decide. But suddenly, I heard a voice from the back room.

                “Mr Principal! Mr Principal!” it was a familiar voice, in fact it belonged to one of the teacher’s favourite students.

                The door that had been ajar since the arrival of Patrice and Kris suddenly slamed open, and the one who did it was a boy, a student like me and Ri. It was Jad. Unlike how he would put up a taunting face whenever we met, I was surprised to find Jad in a state of distress. He was huffing and puffing and was close to freaking out as though he had just been through a session with the bastard counsellor. And when he saw us and the remains of the principal, he shrieked and fell on his knees. Now that I thought about it, I had never seen Jad so afraid.

                “Jad? What happened?” Ri called out to him.

                “Some weird intruders have invaded the school, they tried to shoot some of our friends who ran and captured almost all of us,” I could not help but bombard myself suddenly with so many new questions. This Jad, who had always taken any chance he had to tease me and hurt me was suddenly calling to us like we were his good friends.

                _What just happened? Are those intruders terrorists? But they can’t be them, whether they are from within or from the Chaos Territory, the Tokyo District is considered one of the most secure Imperial territories. We would have long known about it if either of them tried to attack us. However, for Jad to be behaving like this is some serious matter._

                Then, Jad fell to the ground on his legs, and from the dark room appeared this tall figure. He was in some kind of specialized military outfit, even more specialised than any Imperial soldier. It was funny how I suddenly had an urge to reach for the gun in my holster and aim it at the soldier who seemed to be threatening the life of Jad, who I had so despised, then I realized I had lost my gun in battle.

                _CRACK!_

                Before I could ask Ri to use his gun, I suddenly heard the ceiling shatter. The four of us ducked and covered our heads with our hands from the debris that came falling on us.

                _Thud! Thud!_

It was as though something, or someone, came from above and dropped to the ground we were on. I heard screams from my friends and when I tried to turn around to see what happened, I got struck on the back and I fell to the ground. I felt someone’s hands holding tight on me, restraining me and preventing me from moving, but it was probably pointless since I was already so exhausted. Then I heard one of them speaking.

                “Major, this is Theta leader, we have secured the remaining area of the school,” one of the soldiers, who was standing next to the remains of the cyborg body spoke into his walkie.

                “Report in, lieutenant,” came the reply from the walkie.

                “Target A has been found, and he is dead, just like Target B. What are your orders?” said the lieutenant.

                “Theta and all other assault groups please remain on standby as I retrieve orders from the higher-ups, over,” came the radio reply.

                _They seem quite organised, they’re even wearing the same uniform, don’t think they could be any chance the terrorists._

                “What should we do with these kids, sir?” said the soldier who was in charge of restraining me.

                “Don’t shoot them yet, we must await orders. These kids are Imperial property and if we shoot any of them without orders from the higher-ups to do so, we could face severe consequences from those in the Governing Board,” came the reply from the officer.

                _Imperial property? Us? Is that what we actually are to the government? We couldn’t be more right about the things we’ve been learning lately._

                “Theta leader, come in,” the lieutenant’s walkie sounded again.

                “Theta leader here.”

                “I have just received official instructions from the Imperial Government, we are ordered to eliminate every single one of the child and teen specimens and teachers in this school. We are also ordered to destroy every and any device that does and potentially stores data regarding the facility and the activities carried out in the school. The experiments and activities that take place at the school are confidential Imperial secrets, and should these secrets come to knowledge of our enemies, we are liable for extremely severe punishments.”

                “Understood,”

                _What a freaking wet blanket, this guy just said not to shoot us and now he’s going to shoot all of us dead. I guess we were never meant to win anyway. Well, it’s not so bad since we finally get to die and not have to go through all the shit we have been facing. This life had started out as a lousy one, but it wasn’t so bad toward the end._

                “Report when you’re…”

                The walkie suddenly reached static before the major could finish what he was saying. I looked up as hard as I could. When I noticed the emblem on their uniform and helmet, I realized that these were Special Ops Imperial Troops, one of the Imperial Army’s strongest and most disciplined operative group. And then it occurred to me how they knew the layout of the school and what they were looking for. It was pretty nice of them to suddenly barge in and destroy everything, but I wondered why they were targeting the principal and his partner in crime, perhaps they, too, discovered that they were spies from the Chaos Territory, and after seeing what happened to him, they decided to kill us instead.

                “What the,” said the lieutenant, not long again another message came to his walkie, this time from a different person.

                “Theta leader, this is Bravo three, we are under attack!”

                “What in the name of _justice_?” he swore. “What’s going on? How many of them are there?”

                “I can’t tell sir! At first we detected a few of them in Section C, then suddenly they are all over the place!”

                “Damned terrorists! Try and hold out for as long as you can, then try to report…”

                “No! we can’t! We’re being surrounded, send backup now! AAARGGHH-”

                “OI! Bravo Three! Come in Bravo Three!” the lieutenant continued to shout. “Bravo One? Alpha? What the heck’s going on?”

                “Sir! Our radio’s being jammed!” one of the other soldiers who was holding on to Ri reported. Even these specialized discipline group of soldiers were getting as confused as we were when they themselves first appeared to us.

                “Let’s kill these kids first, we have our mission to complete!”

                “No, we need to ascertain the situation first—"

                “Aargh!”

                And then, it took me a second to realize it, but I heard suppressed gunshot sounds, and I confirmed them to be when I noticed the sudden collapse of several soldiers who were keeping us guarded in the room.

                “LOOK OUT!” I heard one of the soldiers scream before falling to the ground like the others. I knew the one restraining me was killed when I felt a little more freedom on my chest, but it was probably pointless as I was drained and getting a little drowsy.

                _I wonder… who could this new party be…_

                I was even losing my thoughts, I knew that eating less meant malnutrition and drinking less meant higher risks of dehydration, but I guess I was too obssessed with fighting to figure out that I could not afford to not eat or drink for an entire day. I could not have asked for a better way to die, it was certainly much better than dying painfully in school or in that Counsellor’s room.

                My eyes started to blink, I was about to lose consciousness. I did not even know how my own friends were doing, most probably they were in the same state as me. And then, I caught a glimpse of some soldiers, whom I believed to be the “terrorists” who ambushed the entire Imperial operative. Although I was spent, but I managed to catch one last conversation.

                “Hey! Is that Ben?” said one of the soldiers from the **fourth party**. “Holy Christ! It’s him! Spear was so damned right!”

                “Get a medic down here now! The lives of this boy and those kids are now priority!” shouted another soldier.

                I did not know then if I was hearing it correctly, but he called me “Ben”, the name Spear used to call me. Unlike how the other soldiers spoke about us, these people talked about us with compassion, even though we had never met. He then walked towards me and put his hand on my forehead.

                “Faster! This kid is burning up in a fever!”

                “We are going as fast as we can, Charlie! Be patient!”

                “Don’t worry kid, Spear told us about you,” said the one named Charlie. “We’re here to rescue you.”

                _Rescue…_

_Us?_

                To think that all these while, there was someone, or an entire group of them, working to find us and save us from our misery, and Spear had just been a hint of it. I smiled, and then, I could not remember what happened next, at least not for quite a while.

**Author's Note:**

> At last! I have finished this arc of my story involving Kei and Ri and their friends. I would like to thank you if you have been reading every other chapter prior to this final one. As for what I will be writing after this, I do not have a structured plan on what I am going to write, although I have already got some ideas. I might write a story to follow up on Spear, and then I might write a sequel to expand on Kris's backstory and character. There will be story-wise progress with regards to the Imperial government, the Chaos Territory, and the internal revolutionists. However, I do not think that I will be writing for quite a while as the semester is getting busier and busier, but I'll definitely get back to it again. Let me know what you all think in the comments and thank you all once again!


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